TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT Working group action
environments across campus-scale estates. Inconsistent naming conventions, siloed metering systems, and limited integration with CAFM platforms reduce the ability to translate raw BMS data into management intelligence. Some providers are now offering unified user interfaces across multiple BMS platforms or estate-level optimisation services, but scaling such approaches requires coordinated asset management rather than isolated building- level tuning.
Third, there is a knowledge translation gap. During roundtable discussions, it became apparent that free training courses offered by BMS providers were not widely known among Trust estates teams. This reflects both a communication gap and a capability constraint: even where resources exist, operational pressures often limit the time and space available for structured upskilling. As a result, advanced system functionality remains underutilised. Collectively, these insights reframed
manual overrides not as the primary problem, but as a visible indicator of limited system confidence within a legacy infrastructure context.
Optimisation as governance, not just
engineering The implications extend beyond local energy efficiency. NHS estates consumed 11.3 billion kWh in 2024/25,1
with a
substantial proportion attributable to heating and plant operations directly influenced by BMS logic. Roundtable participants broadly agreed that effective BMS optimisation is structurally necessary for Scope 1 decarbonisation trajectories. While infrastructure upgrades remain essential, extracting full performance from existing control systems represents a relatively immediate lever. However, optimisation at meaningful scale cannot occur solely at individual building level. Campus-scale estates
require coordinated management, consistent standards, and shared learning. Without some degree of standardisation and proactive BMS management, optimisation efforts become fragmented and difficult to sustain. In this sense, BMS should be understood as an engineering asset embedded within infrastructure governance, rather than as a standalone compliance tool. The Working Group’s evolution
therefore reflected a shift from a technology-first framing to a capacity- and capability-first framing. The issue is not simply the presence of advanced control systems, but the maturity with which they are managed and interpreted.
The role of cross-sector convening
The NGHN Energy & Sustainability Working Group provided a neutral, low-bureaucracy environment in which this reframing could occur. Comprising professionals typically five to fifteen years into their careers, and supplemented by insight sessions with more senior colleagues to ensure continuity of expertise, the network functions as both a leadership incubator and a knowledge bridge across generations.
The roundtable that culminated this phase of work was thematic rather than formally structured, enabling expert knowledge elicitation across digital, estates, and innovation domains. The outcome was not a formal pilot programme, but a clearer articulation of the systemic challenge: BMS underperformance reflects a combination of legacy infrastructure, management standardisation barriers, and capacity limitations that inhibit full utilisation.
August 2026 Health Estate Journal 15
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