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News - Spring 2000

ARE YOU TREADING WATER?

Review of the one day conference held on the 17 November 1999 at the Estates TAG’s usual conference venue of Wrightington Hospital Conference Centre, which is proving to be a popular and easy to get to location.

The day was an outstanding success with 46 pre-booked delegates.

Colin Fitzpatrick opened the day and outlined the format of the conference.

The first session was presented by Alan Hambidge of Hill Environmental
Consultants who explained the definitions and ecology of the genus of bacterium most have come to know as Legionellae. Concluding his introduction, Alan shared with the conference the various modes of transmission and the specifics of a chain of causation. After the morning coffee break, Alan continued to cover the main legislation, Approved Codes of Practice and Health & Safety Guidance notes, ISC 150, and of course, our own HTM 2040. He closed his session with consideration of applying a Risk Management approach to control of this bacterium.

The session was then handed over to Allistair Baldocke from Burnley Health Care, for a short presentation explaining about his organisation and how the Trust was managing this Risk Management process. A formalised process has been instigated, closely following HTM 2040 and attempting to pre-empt the likely structure for Controls Assurance. The process of the old Merewoth planning
process was used as a template covering details of an actual Risk Assessment and how this would be prioritised and developed into a formal risk Reduction Programme.

At the end of the session Allistair donated a bottle of wine for the lucky winner of a correct answer prize draw. A few simple questions were asked and all correct entries were entered into a draw, with one lucky winner, Neil Gordon from Halton General Hospital taking the wine.

After a welcome buffet lunch, the conference was handed over to Ken Lacy of North West Water. Ken is the Regulations Manager (Water Fittings Project) representing North West Water on the National Water Fittings Technical Support Group.

Ken gave a comprehensive and extremely interesting session on the present Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999.

The last session of the conference was presented by Andrew Collins of Energy Management Services who discussed the various water tariffs and rates alongside any opportunities for saving money. Andrew outlined a project recently undertaken in the North West identifying considerable savings via the reassessment of the meter sizing. In some cases the meter wasn’t even changed, the provider agreed to consider the meter to be of a smaller size than was actually fitted.

He went on to outline the potential opportunities that may exist if deregulation was to be placed on the water industry in a similar manner as has been undertaken in the electricity and gas markets.

Colin Fitzpatrick brought the conference to a close and thanked
all the presenters and attendees.

Allistair Baldocke,
Technical Services Manager,
Burnley Health Care NHS Trust