HOSPITALS & HEALTHCARE FACILITIES TIME FOR A CHECKUP


Steve McGregor, Group Managing Director at DMA Group, provides five ways to better manage building maintenance and engineering in hospital estates.


As the largest and most complex healthcare estate in Europe, the National Health Service (NHS) represents over £36bn worth of buildings and equipment. With the most recent data from Estates Return Information Collections, published for all NHS trusts, showing a £947.1m bill for urgent repairs in 2016-17 – a rise of 22% on the previous year, the need for investment in innovation to deliver property and technology solutions is at its highest.


“Do you have the bird’s-eye view of your assets and where they’re at in their lifecycle?”


Yet, with a backlog of high-risk maintenance totalling nearly £1bn, and delayed spending thanks to the switch from capital to revenue budgets, it is more crucial than ever that facilities managers achieve greater first-time resolution for all building and engineering maintenance undertaken.


From the community and mental health teams delivering FM across disparate estates to many of the large Trusts managing legacy buildings with vast underused spaces, two of the biggest challenges facing healthcare FM right now are keeping track of assets and ensuring that sites continually comply with the latest building regulations and legislation.


Here are five ways hospitals can better manage building maintenance and engineering (M&E):


In-house versus outsourced There can be a natural temptation to keep vital M&E in-house to retain full control and keep an eye on things. However, with all the will in the world, there will be areas where specialist expertise should be drafted in to achieve the cost savings and efficiencies that the facility demands. The very first place to start is an evaluation of current staff resources and expertise to build a clearer idea of where the gaps might be.


Appropriate maintenance When managing the full life-cycle of property portfolios, it is vital that FMs visualise the bigger picture of their site(s) and prioritise the most critical maintenance requirements. It might sound like common sense, but when multiple departments are shouting, it can sometimes come down to who shouts the loudest. This is particularly relevant in legacy buildings, where maintenance even in unused areas of the property are more compliance and safety-critical than populated areas.


Repair or replace? The NHS in general, or each individual trust, struggle to detail a list of assets or even a basic understanding of the portfolio value and yield in such disparate estates.


50 | TOMORROW’S FM


So, ensuring that the building and plant is properly maintained in order to realise its useful life is a critical cost-saving opportunity. However, knowing when to repair plant or cut your losses is a significant challenge for a very busy on-site team.


Do you have the bird’s-eye view of your assets and where they’re at in their lifecycle? FMs now look increasingly towards technology to help track and manage this process, but in-house expertise is also vital in the pursuit of speedy, informed and effective decision-making.


Ask the right questions A good M&E partner will deliver planned preventative, condition based, predictive and reactive maintenance via its team of specialist engineers. Ensure you also question how they use computerised service management e.g. handheld smartphone PDA technology, e-logbooks and customer portals to give you most bang for your buck.


Improve visibility of asset and portfolio data Unlike commercial buildings where changes to the core infrastructure maybe less frequent, healthcare facilities support high footfalls - and they also house the vulnerable, those in need of critical care - so these buildings will naturally require more maintenance than the average building. In fact, lives depend on it.


“Whatever system you use, fast information retrieval is of


paramount importance, so you must


be able to obtain all this data with a click of a button”


To keep on top of compliance and asset management, transparency is key. Whatever system you use, or partner you work with, fast information retrieval is of paramount importance, so you must be able to obtain all this data with a click of a button. Today, specialist partners pair second- to-none engineering expertise with smart technology to provide continuous online access to all supporting maintenance documentation, certificates and records.


While opening new hospitals is arguably easier than maintaining or even closing old, underused and inefficient ones, doing so is not in the interest of the ever-dwindling NHS budget. Outsourcing maintenance and FM functions to specialists not only eases the pressure off the inhouse teams responsible for these challenging buildings, but it also offers the NHS a real opportunity to make significant cost and efficiency savings.


www.dma-group.co.uk. twitter.com/TomorrowsFM


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