NSW/ACT

NSW/ACT BRANCH REPORT

The next NSW Professional Development Day is set for 20th November 2020 which will be help in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. Theming for the day will be AS3003 and AS2896. The invitations for NSW and ACT members have already been circulated. Unfortunately due to COVID-19 restrictions only 20 members will be allowed to attend in person however the virtual meeting option does not have any such restrictions.

The commitment is organising these events on a regular basis as part of NSW/ACT 2021 branch strategy to reengage with the members, however as expected these events will be with some restrictions until further notice. Currently there’s a greater focus on running PD days virtually.

AS2896 Medical Gases – Standards Review

IHEA NSW Committee member, Mal Allen, has advised the Branch that there is an innovative round of requests for comments to occur in the next few months. Mal Allen joined several meetings with the Standards Australia working committee to deliberate on public comments of the draft publication. Given the potential large number of replies the review is continuing with the revised standard expected to be finalised by end of 2020. We will keep you posted on progress.

ACT/NSW Branch state conference

The NSW/ACT State conference was organised to be held in May 2020 at Coffs Harbour NSW, however with travel restriction this was postponed. The State conference will now be held on 23rd-24th April 2021. Members have already received “save the date notice” which will be followed by more information for delegates and sponsorship opportunities for our supportive vendors.

Membership

The Committee will be sending reminders for membership renewal and to actively re-engage with the members to understand their expectation. Due to COVID-19 the interest from both industry groups and health facility management practitioners have been limited. The Committee is discussing a variety of strategies on an ongoing basis to serve our members better and meet their expectations. All members are reminded to actively use the IHEA Learning and Development App to capture daily activities that support your own personal development. This is an important initiative that needs everybody involved in IHEA to get on board.

Committee of Management

Name

Robin Arian Mal Allen Jason Swingler Marcus Stalker Dean Benke, Darrell Milton, Greg Allen, Brett Petherbridge, Jon Gowdy, John Miles

Position

President Treasurer Vice President Secretary Committee Member

EFFECTIVE LIFE CYCLE PLANNING

By Donald Macdonald, Director – Macdonald Lucas

As the health care sector emerges, cautiously, from the pandemic enforced lock down, stiff competition from core business for increasingly constrained budgets is likely to be the order of the day.

In this environment a major challenge for healthcare engineers will be securing support for asset replacement projects. It has always been the case, understandably, that business cases for the replacement of non- core assets such as chillers and boilers are much more difficult to make than those for the replacement of core business assets.

Of course there are many reasons for this that include:

• It is difficult to make the case that an asset requires replacement when it appears to be operating effectively; • Engineering assets often fail in service gradually and stakeholders get used to ‘living with’ the inconvenience of unreliable operation- making it difficult for the need to replace them to be perceived; and, • Key decision makers typically have a better understanding of the need for core business assets than they do for non- core business assets.

Faced with these challenges a number of healthcare engineers are turning to RMIT’s CAMS life cycle modelling tool to help communicate their long term asset replacement needs to senior management. Developed over the last twelve years by PhD students using a range of statistical analytical tools, a suite of 900 curves have been developed that model asset degradation over time. These curves are initially applied at individual asset level. CAMS then uses a self- learning algorithm informed by asset condition data, that is uploaded over time, to model how each individual asset is deteriorating in the field.

Asset data can be analysed and reported at both micro and macro level, assets can be classified in any way the client specifies, for example from the point of view of risk, priority or asset type.

Key to CAMS’s success has been the ability to present technical data about asset life in a way that is intuitive to senior management from a non- technical background.

A large number of healthcare organisations, throughout the country have found success in deploying CAMS and see it as an essential tool in planning asset replacement activities. Helping to prioritise these works over time and to manage the expectations of senior stakeholders. Particularly when planning major items of future capital expenditure.