The Canadian Healthcare Enginering Society (CHES) is very pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2010 Hans Burgers Award for outstanding contributions to healthcare engineering is Gordon Burrill, PEng, FASHE, CHC.  Gordon received his award at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society held in Whistler BC.  He is currently President of Teegor Consulting Inc. based in Fredericton New Brunswick.

Gordon is a graduate of the University of New Brunswick with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, and he worked as a design engineer for 13 years, before taking on the role in 1998, of Regional Director of Engineering Services for the former River Valley Health in Fredericton NB.  He directed that division for seven years before founding his own consulting firm, Teegor Consulting Inc. in 2004, a firm which specializes in healthcare engineering codes and standards. 

Gordon served as the Vice President, President, and Past President on the CHES Board of Directors, with his presidency occurring from 2003-2005, and he is currently Chair of the CHES Healthcare Standards Subcommittee.  He was instrumental in founding the Canadian Healthcare Construction Course administered by CHES, and is a lead faculty member of the program.  He volunteers countless hours representing CHES at the Canadian Standards Association and is currently vice-chair of the CSA Technical Committee on Health Facility Engineering and Physical Plant, as well as Chair of the Subcommittee on Infection Control during Construction Renovation and Maintenance of Health Care Facilities.  Gordon also submits regular articles on healthcare standards to “Canadian Healthcare Facilities, the official journal of CHES.  Gordon has been the Chair of the Program Committee for at least 3 past conferences and will serve in this position for the conference in Winnipeg (2011).  He received the 2009 President’s Award from the American Society of Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) for his significant contribution to healthcare engineering and the physical healthcare environment, and he holds their designations of Senior and Fellow of ASHE.  CHES President, Michael Hickey, in presenting the award to Gordon said “Over 26 years Gordon has gone above and beyond to make sure our profession, as well as our Society, provides a career that young engineers have been proud to choose as their path in life.  He has worked with us to ensure our sites are safe and appropriate for the care we need to provide.  He is the true essence of Healthcare Engineering.”

The Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society is a national professional association representing close to 1,000 healthcare engineers and associates across Canada.  It promotes the principle of integrated design by improved collaboration using a team approach between the professions, and provides leadership in creating more efficient management of the operation, maintenance, fire, and safety of hospitals, their engineering systems, equipment, and buildings.

Please open PDF: pdf In Memoriam Wayne McLellan

Hans Burgers received his award posthumously at the 24th CHES Annual Meeting which was held in Richmond BC, September 12-14, 2004. His wife, Alison Miner accepted the award on his behalf.

Anyone involved with CHES during the past 15 years or more no doubt is well acquainted with the name of Hans Burgers. During that time, Hans has actively promoted the society in a number of capacities -as National Treasurer. Vice President, President, Editor of the Quarterly Journal, and most recently as a Council Member of the International Federation of Hospital Engineers (IFHE), since 1998. He has advocated the worth and dedication of CHES members, encouraged them to strengthen their position in the hospital community, and constantly accentuated the need for continuous education. All of this and more garnered him a Life Membership to CHES last year.

Hans was instrumental in making this publication what it is today -an attractive publication and a source of information and debate among the CHES membership. Today he continues to support the journal by writing for it regularly and contributes to the society by sitting on the Council of the IFHE.

To speak of CHES, however, is only to skim the surface of all Hans has done -as a volunteer and as an engineer. It explains how he leads others today, but not what has made him the type of leader he is.

FAMILY VALUES
Hans was born in Liechtenstein in the late 1920s. His father was a master builder and his mother a seamstress who made ecclesiastical garments. In their children, they instilled a respect for the arts -teaching them piano, violin, and painting - and a strong set of values. The family was placed in a concentration camp during the Second World War for assisting in the underground movement. Hans says that he had a "great will to live" through the war. Both parents were killed, but the three children survived. His parents' example is something that has encouraged and supported Hans throughout his life.

After the war, Hans started to build a new future for himself. He spent the next few years in university, first as a fine arts student in Heidelburg and Tilburg, and later as an electrical and a mechanical engineering student in Delft. He finished his architectural degree at the University of Amsterdam. When he wasn't studying, he was working to pay his way through his education.

A NEW LIFE
Since he first emigrated to Canada in 1953, he has been inextricably linked to volunteering and engineering. Canada in the early 1950s was a good place to be for someone as well educated as Hans. The country was changing and it needed good young minds. He started his new life in Canada working on air ducts in vessels at the Halifax shipyards. This was the start of more than 20 very productive and happy years in Halifax, where he started a family and a career as an architect. His earliest work involved building houses - including his own. But Hans assisted in the design of a wide variety of buildings - Grace Maternity Hospital, Waterville Mental Hospital, the YMCA swimming pool, and several churches and schools. He put these skills to work for the less fortunate as well, developing low-income housing projects for the local Roman Catholic Diocese Interfaith housing company. In the same vein, he was, at one stage in his career, the Chairman of the Residential Tenancies Board. "We helped low-income families who were being cheated by builders and landlords," notes Hans. This Board was also responsible for instituting rent controls and other legislation essential for the protection of the poor. For the last 34 years, Hans has also been a member of the Specification Writers Association of Canada. He has served as Vice President of that organization and received the National Award for Merit.

PUBLIC SERVICE
It might appear that Hans lives (and lived) a dour and strictly industrious life, but he has found time for more diverse pursuits. In 1955 he became a Scout leader in St. Catherine's Parish, with a troop of 80 children -one of the biggest in Halifax at the time. He was President of the Scouts in the Greater Halifax Region for several years in the 1970s, and dedicated significant time to improving the amenities available to the campers. This included assisting with the construction of new camps for the Scouts. Hans' time with the organization was crowned when he received the Silver Acorn Award, the highest honour awarded members.

Hans became involved with politics, going so far as to run for the Halifax-East Hants seat for the Liberals. Although he did not win, he became the executive organizer for the party in the riding. You can tell he enjoyed the political fray. As he says himself, "There were a lot of good people, regardless of the political party they supported." The list of his associations goes on. He was involved with the local swim club in Halifax, helped raise money for the Voyageurs (the Canadiens' farm team in Halifax), received the executive award for outstanding service by the Halifax Board of Trade, was a Board Member of Dartmouth Regional Vocational School. He was even named best dressed in the city in 1977. Occasionally he would employ his artistic talents by designing brochures and programs for events, including his own cartoons. Hardly surprising, then, that he has taken such an interest in the look and feel of the CHES Quarterly Journal.

In Toronto, Hans has remained busy, first with his own company, BD Developers Ltd., and with the Providence Centre in the St. Clair and Warden area of the city. He has been involved in the redesign of parts of the Hospital for Sick Children, and with work, most recently, at St. Augustine's. There he has been busy over the past seven years creating greater efficiencies in operations.

Hans has strong feelings about the work that he does and what CHES stands for. "Five to ten per cent of a hospital budget is in engineering, and yet many engineers are not recognized for what they do," he notes. "That's why we lose good people to different areas, and even to the United States. Often one engineer is in charge of two or three hospitals, and he or she can easily get burnt out doing that." Hans stresses always the need for education. Engineers have to constantly upgrade their skills, and CEOs and other hospital administration staff need to know about the work engineers do.

The most telling statement Hans made when I talked to him about writing this article was perhaps also the simplest: "Canada has been good to me. I want to give what I can back to it." In the summer 1998 edition of the CHES Quarterly Journal, Hans Burgers attempted to define a leader. "A leader radiates a forceful yet accessible presence and stands out in the organization being managed," he noted. The skills and qualities that such a position demands, he stated, are enthusiasm, the ability to be an advocate for staff that depends on you, to be a disciplinarian, to have a high standard of ethics, and to be a realist. He also said that true leaders are made, not born. Hans has attempted to live by these tenets throughout his career. He brings enthusiasm to everything he does and has the discipline to see those endeavours through. He is realistic enough to know that not everyone will take his advice to heart or even share his opinions, but believes in his ideas and champions them whenever possible. He has tried to give back to the community by being a leader - demonstrating how much one person can accomplish if he makes the effort.

This article appeared in the Quarterly Journal, CHES/SCISS Spring/printemps 2001 1