Water management experts from across the healthcare sector came together to discuss pressing issues in the latest meeting of the Water Safety Experts Forum.
The group is convened by Armitage Shanks at the London Design and Specification Centre to give their insight on challenges and opportunities in healthcare.
Members include medical staff, academics, engineers and estates and facilities managers.
The hot topic this time was product specification requirements emerging from the NHS’ New Hospitals Programme, a multi-billion-pound strategy which plans to deliver 40 entirely new hospitals and eight redevelopment projects.
The requirements aim to help the programme ensure better value for money and the efficiency, longevity and sustainability of products.
Key themes which came out of the discussions were the need to focus on processes as well as products.
These included the need to monitor water systems, the education of installers, maintaining infrastructure and achieving standardisation.
Non-Residential Marketing Manager Anil Madan said: “It was a really constructive day, with lots of feedback and lots of discussion.
“What makes the Water Safety Experts Forum invaluable to us is that it helps us to understand how experts in the healthcare sector are responding to what the NHS is requiring and what we should be doing as a manufacturer.”
A more detailed look at the Water Safety Forum discussions will follow on the Looking Deeper blog on Idealspec.