Every last box on the Retirement Chart has been duly ticked off and I leave P+HS today in the safe hands of Joe Biggs and his fellow directors. P+HS is a great team of people and delivers exemplary service to all our clients, and that’s what my time at P+HS has been all about. The last two years have been tough but that service enables us to grow and develop. We’re not out of the woods yet and, more than ever, the team needs to pull together and everyone in the firm needs to focus on maintaining and improving our service. I know you can do it.
I shall stay in touch by supporting our work in Saudi Arabia, as a director of DMI Healthcare. I shall also be working with Mark Glatman of Abstract Securities to grow and develop the Abstract Healthcare portfolio; I hope in these ways to be able to help P+HS maintain its workload and keep in touch with your progress.
The last twenty-seven years have been great and I haven’t regretted the path I chose for one moment. I am humbled by your generosity and value your friendship, humour and, above all, your absolute dedication to the firm.
Oh my word!The kitchen here on Friday morning could have gone into competition with Betty’s…AND WON!
We wanted to take part in and support the MacMillan national coffee morning and so Gill, Patrice and Natalie (or Nigella, Fanny and Delia as we now call them – but not necessarily in that order!) baked and cooked up a feast, sticky sausages – so moreish, corned beef and sweet potato pie mmmm, bacon and leek quiche (with a sticky sausage on the side served as a traditional English breakfast!), flap jacks that satisfied any sweet tooth, and don’t even get me started on the cup cakes! (Yes I know Angela…they were called fairy cakes in my day too).So a big fat (and after that lot I mean “fat”) thank you to them for the tremendous effort made, and thanks to all who have “purchased” the goods and enabled a generous donation to MacMillan, (over £80.00!!).The generosity of everybody who works here at P+HS never fails to amaze me, particularly this year.Thank you, you’re brill!
Congratulations to all our staff who took part in the Great North Run at the weekend and raised oodles of money for Charity. This year beneficiaries of our staff’s hard training and sponsorship include the Alzheimer’s Society, Guide Dogs for the Blind and Farplace Animal Rescue. Pictured here are Lisa Cook, Adrian Evans, Kay Dodds and Helen Goodsell. Word is that Tim Wilson ran too fast to be caught on camera.
Willmott Dixon have installed a webcam at the Houghton le Spring Primary Care Centre site. This can be viewed by visiting this web page.
Should you wish to view the progress of this project, you will need a user name and password to gain access to the webcam. Please contact me, via email, for confirmation of both.
The 30th Bupa Great North Run, the world’s biggest half marathon, will take place on Sunday 19 September 2010. I will be particpating to raise funds on behalf of The Alzheimer’s Society.
Alzheimer’s Society is the UK’s leading care and research charity for people with dementia and those who care for them.
There are 750,000 people with dementia in the UK with numbers set to rise to one million by 2025. Alzheimer’s Society is a membership organisation, which works to improve the quality of life of people affected by dementia in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. To find out more, visit their web site at http://www.alzheimers.org.uk
Due for completion later this month, the new Linacc building at Nottingham University Hospital has recently gathered pace in preparation for handover. Following a recent site visit the building has been extremely well recieved with the end users and general staff. A few minor tasks remain including the installation of the decorative glass canopy and feature wall designed by a local artist as part of the Breeam credit.
World Architecture News is a web based international architecture magazine. It has some good stuff on it from time to time and it has awards in several categories. I was a jury member for the healthcare awards this year and think the shortlist and winners are pretty interesting. Have a look for yourself. .. Oh, and if you want to have something to pull my leg about next time you see me, also have a listen to my very first YouTube appearance! Wend
myPANTONE Palettes is an interactive color workspace that provides an easy and engaging platform for selecting and working with colors. It integrates into any application that supports system level color pickers. There are multiple ways for designers to select colors through the software:
-Color Pickers: Colors are selected within a hue circle or square hue gradient color picker, or by manually entering RGB or HTML values for known colors.
-PANTONE Palettes: Colors are selected directly from PANTONE Libraries (only with Libraries installed)
-Eye-dropper Tool: Allows users to pick up any color appearing on their desktop.
-Color Blender: Forms a color gradient between two user-defined colors with up to 83 individual steps between them.
-Color Schemes: Colors are selected according to color harmonies: monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic and tetradic colors.
-Image Palette Builder: Allows users to import an image into the Image Palette Builder and automatically generate a palette using the dominant colors within the image. As many as 12 colors can be automatically generated.
Defining, Saving and Exporting Color Palettes
After selecting individual colors, users can drag and drop them within the myPalettes area to create a color palette. They also have the ability to view any saved palettes, print, export, organize and lock palettes, as well as edit individual color properties.
myPANTONE is a free download once signed up as a Pantone member
After a few minor problems, I have managed to successfully use Revit with ADB to load one room in the Morpeth NHS Centre model with furniture and other fittings. This link has not yet been used within P+HS so I thought I would show you what it can achieve. The blocks imported from ADB are basic, and are subject to a few minor problems (the usual chair appearing in the ceiling etc), however these are easily rectified and in a short space of time I created the following images and a short walk through.
It works in a very similar way to the CAD/ADB link, meaning changes in the Revit model are fed back into the ADB room data sheets and generic room layouts can be saved and duplicated easily and quickly and new items of furniture can be created.
Joe Stenson from our Leeds office has been awarded a Merit in design for his Part II thesis. Joe says:
“heartiest of thanks to all staff for the help and support offered to me throughout the “hard fought slog” – (Geraldine) that was my Part II. The feedback and commentary received from colleagues throughout were invaluable to the general design process.”
Joe’s scheme is a Crematorium complex that amalgamates the existing facilities in the Leeds metropolitan area onto a secluded site bordered by the River Aire and the Leeds / Liverpool Canal. Key to the thesis was investigating the provision of bespoke buildings for semi-outdoor cremations, as required by those of Hindu, Sikh & Buddhist following. A few images of the scheme are shown here:
The Final boards Joe presented are available here: X:\Resources\Students\Presentations\JJS Thesis Boards if you are interested.
Congratulations Joe.
Note that whereas HBN40 ‘Common Activity Spaces Vol:2 Treatment Areas’ (now superseded) set the height of a clinical basin at 860mm to the rim, HBN 00-03 ‘Clinical and Clinical Support Spaces’ now sets the height at 800mm.
Construction has started on Porch Close (The Ardens) in Northallerton for Broadacres Housing Association. Accommodation comprises 10 apartments for rent to people over the age of 55. The project is due to be completed in February 2011.
The site is located to the rear of Porch House, the oldest house in Northallerton, and falls within the conservaton area. The building is largely traditional in appearance with some modern features such as the double height curtain walling and a glazed canopy to the entrance.
The building will achieve Level 3 under the Code for Sustainable Homes, using solar panels for water heating and high standards of thermal insulation. Each apartment has also been designed to meet Lifetime Homes, with full disabled access and storage for mobility scooters within the hall.
One of me because Steve will be disappointed if I don’t include this photo!
As part of achieving Breeam Excellent at the design stage for LINAC, the new radiotherapy centre Nottingham, a credit was gained for compliance with the 3% daylighting factor required for a typical 12 – 15sqm Consultant / Exam room. The photograph and sketch above illustrates the actual size of the window in relation to the room.
In this instance, the size and proportion of the window was governed by the fact that the room depth is greater than the room width, meaning that a large surface area of glazing is required in order to achieve 3% daylighting.
An alternative to this type of window which would still achive a 3% daylighting factor, would be to consider rotating the room by 90 degrees (so that the room depth is less than the width). This method would improve the quality of light transfer into the room and provide an opportunity for more interesting elevations in terms of external window fenestration. The down side to this however, would be the possibility of longer corridors.
