News

Michael Powell of the PA Consulting Group has shared this:

PA Consulting continues to lead the coordination of efforts for ventilators and are working on their design and manufacture, too.

PA Consulting is coordinating the effort between government and the private sector to produce ventilators, one of the many ways we're responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We're proud to say we're also collaborating with other medical device development companies from Cambridge, UK to rapidly develop and manufacture ventilators. You can read more about the effort in this GOV.UK news story and in our joint press release.

Catherine Macleod from element has shared what they are doing:

London, UK - April 2, 2020 - Element Materials Technology (Element) is lending its support to the national drive to increase ventilator production in response to the NHS' urgent demand to treat coronavirus patients in the UK.

Element has developed a testing regime to cover the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and basic safety requirements for a Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator System (RMVS) prototype being developed by a number of manufacturers and consortia. Before new devices can be categorized as ‘safe' for use in medical working environments and brought to market, it is necessary to determine if a device can perform safely and provide its essential performance without causing harm and/or electromagnetic disturbances in its appropriate operating environment. This is typically achieved by testing to applicable medical safety standards.

Safety test plans drawn up by Element's Advisory Services team based in Malvern are being used to perform the testing from its product qualification testing (PQT) laboratory in Hitchin. Element also provided EMC test plans to manufacturers who will carry out the initial phase of testing, while phase two testing will be carried out by Element from a number of its PQT facilities.

Mark Heaven, Divisional Director Global Aerospace PQT at Element said: "We are delighted to be able to offer our expertise, free of charge, to support the national effort to fight COVID-19, and are already in discussions with other medical device manufacturers to carry out EMC and safety testing on their RMVS prototypes this week. Element hopes to continue to offer our integral safety conformity services throughout this period of high demand for ventilators."

Element Hitchin is one of our safety testing centres of excellence, with UKAS accreditation to BS EN ISO/IEC 17025:2017. Our areas of technical expertise at Element Hitchin include Medical Testing & Regulatory Affairs, Safety Testing and Certifications & Approvals. We work with manufacturers of electrical medical devices; are approved to ISO 9001:2015, and typically provide medical regulatory testing and test reports to European EN 60601 series of standards and American pre-market authorizations the 510(k) route, which are the core standards/procedures for medical product verification.

MICW Clare Tunnicliffe from Atos has become one of Boris's 22000 clinical people! She writes: "My first degree is in pharmacy but I stopped being a pharmacist a couple of years ago because I wasn't working in a clinical environment. Pharmacists were asked to rejoin the register as part of the call-up and just over 3000 have. I am currently volunteering within my local community pharmacy in evenings and weekends to help with the increased demand. I am still working full time in my normal paid work supporting collaborative development but it's great to be able to support my community and feel I am making a bit of a difference."

Last week, The Kier Highways team successfully mobilised, and started working on, the Birmingham Highways Ltd contract. The team has donated 40,000 disposable gloves to Birmingham City Council to provide care teams across the City with vital, much-needed PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are delight to report that Sellafield Ltd, one of the Institute's Executive Network members, have achieved certification to ISO 44001 (5th February) for their key collaborative business relationships within their supply chain.

ICW was pleased to support their development and we congratulate all those involved in the certification process.

The Individual Members Elections for the ICW Advisory Council are underway and you should have received the Ballot paper in the post. If you have not received a ballot paper and think you are eligible, please contact Alan Maund at the ICW office on 0203 051 1077.

The following ICW members are the candidates for the eight individual council seats:-

Stephen Abrahams, Ben Cross, Andrew Hopper, Louise Jones, Louise McMahon, Edward Moore, Gail Stephenson, Stephen Blakey, Odilon Serrano, John Doyle, Richard Venerus, Robert Bryce, Adrian Miller, Christopher Richardson, Lois Love, Paul Bibby, Steven Fulcher, Richard Holm, Tim Mowat, Jo Potter, Richard Smith, Barry Leighton, Steven Dolan, Trevor Gore, Bryn Richards, David Hitchin and Frank Lee.

Remember to complete your ballot paper and return it in the enclosed addressed envelope as soon as possible - voting closes on Friday March 6th, 2020 at 5pm.

Any ballot papers receive after the 6th will not be counted.

The Corporate Elections for the ICW Advisory Council are underway and you should have received the Ballot paper in the post. If you have not received a ballot paper and think you are eligible, please contact Alan Maund at the ICW office on 0203 051 1077.

The following companies are Corporate candidates for the eight corporate council seats:-

Skanska UK, BAM Nuttall Ltd, Morgan Sindall Construction, Gattaca PLC, Babcock International Group, Mott MacDonald, Costain, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, Network Rail, NATS, Keir Highways, Indra, Leidos, Amey Defence Services Ltd, QinetiQ Ltd, EMCOR, Lloyds Register LRQA, Leonardo MW Ltd and BSi.

Remember to complete your ballot paper and return it in the enclosed addressed envelope as soon as possible - voting closes on Friday March 6th, 2020 at 5pm.

Any ballot papers receive after the 6th will not be counted.

We are pleased to advise that voting papers have been mailed today to eligible Corporate Executive network members, Fellows and Indivdual Members (MICW), so watch out for the post. As this is a new approach for ICW we are delighted and very much encouraged by the level of engagement, with 18 nominations for the 8 Corporate places and 28 nominations for the 8 individual member places. This gives a clear indication of the commitment across our membership community. This is the membership's opportunity to influence the Institute's future direction.

For those voting please note the closing date is 6th March 2020 - papers received after this date will be void.

As a reminder, each Corporate Member can vote for their 8 choices and the same for the Individual Members' 8 places.

Please allow suffucient time for your votes to arrive with Price Bailey by the closing date using the stamped addressed envelope included with the voting papers and nominee profiles.

ICW have released the training course programme for 2020, which is now available here. We have increased the number of public courses this year. However, to ensure we have a minimum cohort to make the courses work for the participants, we may need to cancel individual courses and defer bookings. Full details of all courses including in-house programmes are available on the Website. Please note that for Corporate and Individual MICW members discounts are available on all courses. We would also remind MICW members that with the new route to Fellowship, expanding, learning and building their capability will be part of the CPD assessment.

For further information email training@icw.uk.com.

Congratulations to Babcock [Devonport] Warships and its partners, who successfully achieved ISO 44001 Certification with LRQA just before Christmas. This has been a real journey to bring many of the Defence sector partners [RN, MoD and Babcock] into a truly collaborative environment and bodes well in setting a benchmark in the defence sector.