Improving the environmental conditions within NHS and healthcare estate buildings – while reducing operating costs and carbon emissions – is an increasingly critical focus for NHS Estates teams, healthcare engineers, and Sustainability leads. With the NHS committed to achieving Net Zero by 2040 for direct emissions, Vincent McMonagle, MEP Clerk of Works at 6RG, says

It is widely acknowledged that the healthcare sector – where patients by nature are at more risk of infection, is more susceptible than most to the dangers presented by Legionella bacteria. What may be less well known is that this risk is rising, as the number of healthcare-acquired cases of Legionnaires’ disease worldwide continues to

The quest for clean air dates back to Hippocrates (c. 460 — 377 BC), often considered the ‘Father of Medicine’. He emphasised the effects of environmental factors, including air quality, on human health. He linked the characteristics of the air in a region to the prevalence of certain diseases. He believed that understanding the winds,

Digital water monitoring (DWM) refers to the use of connected sensors and software platforms to track various conditions within a water system in real time. These systems measure variables like temperature, flow, biofilm, and stagnation, flagging potential risks long before they develop into costly problems and unsafe situations. They do this in a variety of

Jon Sharp, UK Specification manager for the Care sector at warewashing system manufacturer, Meiko, considers some of the potential infection risks when clinical and nursing staff are handling bedpans, and focuses particularly on the advantages of using advanced washer-disinfectors to thoroughly clean and disinfect bedpans compared with using reusable pulp bedpans, which are typically disposed

Speaking during an update on the activities of the various IHEEM Technical Platforms at July’s 2025 IHEEM Authorising Engineers conference, Harry Evans, an IHEEM-Registered Authorising Engineer (Water) discussed a past experience in his AE capacity advising a school on addressing a challenging Legionella issue. In a cautionary tale, he described how he, the school’s own

Estate management is an increasingly urgent issue for the UK government, which is facing a £49 bn public estate maintenance backlog, with £13.8 bn accounted for by the healthcare sector alone – more than twice the 2015/16 figure, highlighting a growing strain on healthcare infrastructure. With limited resources, NHS Trusts must now tap into available

The National Health Service (NHS) is the UK’s largest public sector emitter of carbon emissions, a statistic that is particularly concerning given its crucial role in the health and wellbeing of millions of people. The NHS operates an extensive and ageing estate, which is not only a source of significant carbon emissions, but also increasingly

“Ventilation is used extensively in all types of healthcare premises to provide a safe and comfortable environment for patients and staff and control odours”, according to Health Technical Memorandum 03-01, Part A.1 Whilst this is a basic description of the purposes of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC), it could equally apply to retail outlets and

The decontamination of surgical instruments, medical devices, endoscopes, and dental tools is an essential process in ensuring patient safety, preventing healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs), and maintaining the integrity and longevity of medical equipment. Modern dosing equipment plays a pivotal role in today’s sterile service departments, and advancements in this technology, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

The twenty-fourth of February 2025 finally saw the launch of the Procurement Act 2023 (the ‘Act’) — the largest single regulatory change to Public Procurement in over a decade. Its launch concluded what was a four-year long journey for the sector, with a variety of consultation periods, bill readings within both the House of Lords

This article recasts the way lighting systems in healthcare estates are commonly valued. We look beyond the carbon footprint savings, and outline the demographic and human resource challenges facing Estates managers. By looking at interior lighting in its full dimension, through its essential attributes (brightness, color temperature, and spatial cognition), Estates and Facilities managers may

Continuous professional development to ensure competency has been identified as an essential requirement for the decontamination sector, in the wake of the findings of the HSSIB report on a serious failure in decontamination. With this in mind, the IDSc was instrumental in the development and introduction of NHS Estates Technical Bulletin NETB/2024/1 version 2.0 — documenting the competency

The first morning’s opening conference session, at an event themed ‘Pioneering estates for tomorrow’, was prefaced with an introduction from IHEEM’s CEO, Pete Sellars, who highlighted the ‘great line-up of speakers’, and told delegates that what made such events special was their engagement with those presenting. He explained that the first session’s keynote speaker would

Hospital wastewater (HWW) is characterised by the presence of various emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs), several microorganisms, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE), antibiotic-resistant genes (ARG), and persistent viruses, etc. It is important to note that Carbapenem antibiotics are often considered a last-resort treatment, as they represent the final suite of