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from the editor...
Leader
column
This month’s news form the field is just as exciting as ever. When is the facilities management
sector going to calm down, I ask you? Hopefully it won’t, I hear you cry...
Last week saw the doors open to the country’s first NHS LIFT centre, a project brought
to life by facilities management company Sewell and Hull Citycare. What does LIFT
stand for I hear you ask? Local Improvement Finance Trust - another acronym for us to
contend with!
As well as seeing a doctor, patients will be able to borrow a library book, check their
email and pick up a prescription from the pharmacy - the facilities really are that
good. What I want to know is how long will the waiting list be?
Hull Citycare, the city’s LIFT company (who also manage the building on behalf of
Eastern Hull Primary Care Trust), built the centre at a cost of £2.3m. Apparently, the
scheme is the first of many, with the next scheduled to open in Hull in early 2006.
Sewell, the private sector partner in Hull Citycare, provides services including property
development, maintenance and estates management over a 20-year term.
Elsewhere Initial Fire and Security impressed by winning two trophies at the Security
Industry Training Organisation Awards.
The Blackburn-based company won the ‘Outstanding Training Practice within an
Organisation’ and ‘Best Training Professional’ categories for training centre manager
David Millett.
Clive Hayton, managing director at Initial Fire and Security, said: “Our apprentice
training programme goes from strength to strength and is now, quite rightly, regarded
as the industry benchmark.”
Keep up the good work Initial, who by the way also won the British Security Industry
Association’s chairman’s award recently.
News also broke this month that multi-disciplinary consultancy Atkins had been
appointed as a framework partner on the Environment Agency National Engineering
and Environmental Consultancy Framework (NEECA).
Under the deal Atkins will help to deliver a £2bn flood defence, waterways and water
resources capital works programme over the next 10-years.
Atkins will provide waste management, biodiversity, landscape design, environmental
planning, fisheries, recreation, navigation and water resources.
Framework director at Atkins, Dermod Sweeney, said: “We expect to build on the successes
of the previous NEECA framework.”
With all this activity in our sector, and no shortage of work, it comes as no surprise to
learn there are recruitment problems in building and construction.
According to a survey by KPMG, the sector is having problems recruiting and retaining
skilled staff.
Nearly half of 142 building and construction HR industry executives said skills shortages
were leading their organisation to squeeze profit margins to pay higher wages.
Shock horror, 63% of respondents also said staff were leaving because competitors were
offering higher wages. Welcome to the real world...
Richard Whittington, head of building and construction at KPMG, said: “Skills shortages
remain a huge issue for the building and construction sector... most said this would
remain the case for at least the next two years.”
On a more serious note, you may be interested to learn that a June 6th retrial date
has been announced for the Barrow council architect Gillian Beckingham.
Beckingham faced manslaughter charges following an outbreak of Legionnaires disease
in 2002, which she escaped, but was charged with an H&S offence.
Beckingham is now preparing appeal against the H&S charge for the second time.
The first appeal failed when a deadline for action was missed.
www.practicalfm.co.uk