IHEEM WALES REGIONAL CONFERENCE 2025
Ensuring that Wales has a fit-for-purpose estate
Addressing delegates from across the healthcare engineering and estate management sector in a morning keynote at the IHEEM Wales Regional Conference at the ICC Wales in May, Stuart Douglas, Director of NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership – Specialist Estates Services, focused on some of the key priorities to ensure that Wales has a fit-for-purpose healthcare estate. Areas covered included the need to make the optimal use of under- or unused buildings and land, the challenges of reaching Net Zero, and some of the existing and emerging tools for better managing the over two million square metres of space that currently make up the country’s NHS estate.
Speaking immediately following the morning’ first keynote, given remotely by Judith Paget, Director General for Health and Social Services and NHS Wales CEO, on 7 May, Stuart Douglas told the conference the key areas he would be like to explore would be tools for management – with ‘the estate-sensitive subject of surveys and risk management’, space utilisation and rationalisation, decarbonisation and Net Zero, and ‘probably a little bit of good news at the end’. Beginning with ‘tools for management of the estate’, he said that ‘across Wales and probably the rest of the UK’, there was ‘a wide and varied approach’ to managing the estate. While some organisations still used manual systems supported by a range of databases, spreadsheets, and work process calls, others had adopted ‘more modern, active’, computer-aided CAFM systems, which, by comparison, would enhance efficiency and quality, and give assurance of compliance across the estate. He said: “For our Health Boards to have any assurance of adhering to modern standards of estates and facilities management, we need to adopt the latter across the board.”
Following his presentation, Stuart Douglas fielded some wide-ranging questions from the audience.
The situation in England Looking at ‘the situation in England’, Stuart Douglas said NHS Wales SSP had appreciated having sight of the recently issued NHSE draft Estatecode, HBN 00-08, with its minimum asset data requirements, and the associated data management systems which should be adopted. He explained: “The minimum dataset they’re saying we should all have comprises up-to-date drawings of the estate and engineering services in CAD format, a current asset register, updated within the last two years, testing and inspection records, risk registers, and risk assessments and Safe Systems of Work for each asset.” It was also implicit – he said – that six-facet survey data be included. He said he was ‘really encouraged’ that colleague Health Boards and Trusts across Wales were ‘ahead of the game’, and exploring things like the introduction of 3D imaging of their estate via, for example, the Matterport tool.
28 Health Estate Journal June 2025
The speaker noted that systems for operating estate were categorised in the draft Estatecode as comprising Computer Aided Facilities Management, computerised maintenance management, and integrated workplace management, with ‘quite an overlap across the three’. “Effectively,” Stuart Douglas said, “it’s about creating
a systematic method of recording and managing our approach to the estate. We should have systems whereby Estates staff come to work and are prompted to address requests for work, planned maintenance schemes, testing and servicing regimes, validation, actions and jobs, and discharge of specified actions. Up the chain you then have the assurance that the work is done. We’re still appraising the Estatecode draft to see how it might be applied in Wales, but I think it highly likely some formal direction will emerge on the adoption of robust CAFM-type systems, and/or minimum estates and FM datasets.” On surveys and risk management, Stuart Douglas
explained that NHS Wales SSP SES has worked with NHS colleagues and Welsh Government to appraise the options for improvement with six-facet survey information, ‘irrespective of whether this leads to a national funded survey programme’. He added: “We’re delighted that health organisations agree that we need to work more closely to review and define definitions and collaborate to improve our alignment on risk reporting. All of us recognise this, and are committed to making it work.”
The ‘retained 6 facets’ Looking at ‘the retained six facets’, he said: “The feedback we’ve had is that quality and environmental management really need to be substantially revisited if they are to be retained. The remaining facets – of physical condition, statutory and fire compliance, space utilisation, and functional suitability – remain absolutely key measures, Stuart Douglas continued. “We need to ensure that surveys are both current and competent, and to be smart in the way we concentrate the attention of those that assist us in completing the survey function. The Estatecode draft highlights the function of lifecycle analysis – pointing toward lifespans and risks for building and engineering components, particularly as they reach the end of their designed life. At the onset of any survey commission, those of us who own and are responsible for the estate should review our portfolio with surveyors, and point them toward areas where we can determine that components are reaching the end of their designed lives.” The speaker stressed that this not only applied to roofs, windows, ‘or anything else’, but as much to engineering and the wider site infrastructure – ‘looking across the
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