NATIONAL EFM POLICY AND STRATEGY
The 2021/2022 season Finals of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) national Faraday Challenge – an annual competition to encourage more young people to study and consider STEM careers – took place at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in late June 2022. The 2021-2022 Challenge saw IHEEM act as the main ‘theme partner’.
had prompted a re-think in healthcare facilities’ running and operation. I asked Simon Corben in what areas of EFM activity he felt the greatest impact on evolving practice had been. He said: “I think we now recognise, more than ever, the importance of resilience, and of highly technical services like medical gases and ventilation, alongside those of portering, cleaning, and catering, and of quality environments. We also understand the need for good communication. Our clinical colleagues, meanwhile, have learned the importance of medical gases and ventilation, and both ‘sides’ now recognise the vital importance of good and close ongoing dialogue between EFM teams and clinicians.”
Innovation Healthcare generally, and indeed healthcare engineering and estate management, have been major beneficiaries of innovations in new technology, in almost every facet of their activities; indeed developments such as AI and increasing ‘digitalisation’ will surely transform care delivery. I wondered how impressed Simon Corben has been with the level of innovation and imagination he has seen from suppliers to the sector. He replied: “At October’s Healthcare Estates 2023, I had a good look around the exhibition, and there are some amazing things people are developing to improve the way we deliver care. Where we need to improve is showcasing some of these products and technologies, so others learn about them, and I recognise it can still be really hard for suppliers to get their products seen by potential buyers. There are great opportunities to highlight their products and expertise at places like Healthcare Estates and HEFMA’s annual event. It’s something I’d like to help with.” “On ‘digital’,” Simon Corben added,
“we’re working with a number of our FM suppliers and consultancies and developing digital twins, and you’ll see
42 Health Estate Journal January 2024
a lot more happen here over the next 12 months, which I’m really quite excited about – with my team really driving that operational digitalisation of the estate.” With one of the most noticeable impacts of COVID-19 being increasing use in primary care of e-consulting, the past 3-4 years have seen considerable continuing debate about the opportunities for more care to be delivered remotely using ‘telehealth’ technology. I asked Simon Corben if he envisaged this escalating significantly in the short to medium term, and about the potential impact on the estate. He answered: “I think it needs to happen – because we simply don’t have the space in our facilities for it not to. When you look at the ageing demographic we’ll see in the next 10-20 years, pushing care out in the community is central to our strategic thinking. Equally, that is what the ICSs are doing within their Estate Strategies – looking at that ‘left shift’, as per the NHS Long Term Plan. I’d like to see more community diagnostic centres integrated into a wider community offering, as opposed to separate individual buildings.” Simon Corben explained that he and
his team have an initiative called the Cavell Programme, which is about these ‘integrated care hubs’, and that the team is currently writing a programme business case for this. He said: “It will be a significant part of our campaign going into the next Spending Review – examining how we can scale integrated care hubs across the communities – via a combination of new-build, refurbishment, and utilisation of existing estate.” Adding that the Virtual Ward programme was ‘going really well’, he said that the next key focus here would be on ‘the FM package we can put around it’. I wondered how important to the
sector he felt learning from international best practice was.” He replied: “We did a lot of sharing through COVID in really impressive ways. Our EFM technical
standards programme, for example, considers experience in other countries. Many, of course, still look to the UK for FM advice around healthcare, but I’ve had opportunities to see what goes on elsewhere in Europe. I think the key is to continually learn – whether from Europe, or the rest of the world, about how we can do things a little differently.”
Importance of knowledge-sharing We often hear that NHS Trusts operate in ‘silos’, so I asked Simon Corben whether he feels there is sufficient sharing of knowledge, experience, and expertise, among NHS Trust healthcare EFM teams and their counterparts in other Trusts. He said: “My impression is that EFM professionals are sharing ideas. We’ve been delighted with the development of the NHS Estates Team Collaboration Hub. We now have over 2,500 members – having started with 25, with a constant flow of questions and answers – from the north-east of the country to the south- west – on anything from cleaning and car parking to engineering. The webinars we have run have also proven a great way of sharing knowledge. We can still go further though, and we’re currently working to make the Collaboration Hub something even more intuitive, and accessible on a handheld device, so people out at the coalface can stay up to date.” Moving to technical guidance, I
wondered how updates to the HTMs and HBN documents were progressing. Simon Corben said: “At the outset it was really tricky to get that programme moving again. However, we have just let the next generation of standards, and are starting to see some documents being published. Of course everyone wants the new standards tomorrow, but you have to go through a proper consultation process first.” I wondered what he felt had been the
greatest challenges for he and his team since the pandemic. He said: “We’ve
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