ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION – ‘DECANTING’
How decanting can address current NHS challenges
At October’s Healthcare Estates 2023 conference, offsite manufacturer, McAvoy, held a roundtable to which it invited a panel of UK industry experts – all from the healthcare sector – to explore the topic ‘How can decanting assist with the current challenges NHS Trusts are facing with the provision of new facilities?’, with a view to identifying some solutions. The company’s head of Design and Technical services, Martin Harvey, reports on an interesting discussion.
HEJ’s readers will be acutely aware of the growing NHS building maintenance backlog, and with an ageing healthcare estate on the one hand, and ever higher expectations for care on the other, many – and especially, older, healthcare buildings – have reached a condition where refurbishment or reconfiguration to bring them up to modern standards is an absolute imperative. In recent months, the daily pressures felt by Estates teams to undertake maintenance and refurbishment on their highest risk buildings with minimal delay has been supplemented by another – mounting concerns over the structural integrity of the RAAC planking used in a number of healthcare and educational buildings from the 1950s to the 1980s. Indeed recent Government mandates and associated funding to address the issue, in the process ensuring the safety of such buildings’ users, have seen many NHS Trusts embark on the required remedial works as quickly as the available manpower and financial resources have allowed. Of course any such major works – whether routine maintenance, significant reconfiguration, or addressing RAAC planking, normally requires patients in the affected buildings to be re-located for the duration of the programme. On older, more
constrained NHS hospital estates, however, finding a suitable location to ‘decant’ them to can be a considerable challenge in itself. Such ‘decanting’ is, of course, now a well-established and well-rehearsed practice, and in the simplest terms requires an effective, well-thought-out, and well-managed plan to relocate patients, staff, and equipment, from one part of a healthcare estate to another. It is entirely reliant, though, on sufficient availability of suitable temporary accommodation. All those involved in providing services
to the healthcare sector are well aware that the decanting process can often be challenging. For example, how many times do we hear consultants and contractors claiming they are frequently asked to deliver projects where, in many cases, the budget and programme for decants do not exist, as the very nature of the ‘decant’ is an emergency requirement or a short- term provision that would have never been planned for? Is there, however, a way in which this process could be improved?
Roundtable discussion at sector’s biggest UK event McAvoy, which has more than 50 years’ experience within offsite manufacturing, decided to tackle the issue by inviting a
panel of UK industry experts – all from the health sector – to explore the topic, ‘How can decanting assist with the current challenges NHS Trusts are facing with the provision of new facilities?’, at a special roundtable event held during last October’s Healthcare Estates conference and exhibition in Manchester. The participants were: n Martin Harvey, head of Design and Technical Services – McAvoy.
n Mel Jacobsen Cox, head of Healthcare – HLM Architects.
n Melissa King, Senior Category lead – NHS Shared Business Services.
n Warren Percival, director – RSK. n Chris Argent, Preconstruction director – Dowds Group (MEP).
n Alyson Prince, Built Environment Infection Control Consultant Nurse.
n Keith Hodgson, assistant director of Estates, Planning – Strategy – Capital.
n Prioritising consultant and contractor involvement
The roundtable began with discussion on whether – in some cases – consultants and contractors are often being introduced too late.
Mel Jacobsen Cox (MJC) began: “This is an area of building and design that doesn’t
In 2022 McAvoy completed a 48-bedded ward block for Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham. March 2024 Health Estate Journal 79
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