IHEEM DIGITAL WEEK KEYNOTE
Praise for the EFM sector’s ‘phenomenal response’
Speaking in the opening Healthcare Estates Online Digital Week webinar on 5 October, in a presentation entitled ‘An audience with Simon Corben’, the director and head of Profession for Estates and Facilities at NHSE/NHSI discussed some of the challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic for he and his team, praised the ‘exceptional professionalism’ of healthcare estates and healthcare engineering professionals during the coronavirus outbreak, and outlined some of the key lessons for the EFM community. Following his presentation, he took wide-ranging questions from online attendees. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie reports.
The opening webinar in IHEEM’s Healthcare Estates Online Digital Week, held from 5-9 October, was hosted by the Institute’s CEO, Pete Sellars, who introduced Simon Corben to the digital ‘audience’. Welcoming attendees to the session, the NHSE/NHSI speaker thanked the Institute for facilitating ‘such an important event’, and praised the ‘phenomenal response’ of the entire healthcare estates community during the pandemic. He added: “Now, we have a unique opportunity to build on those successes and drive up the profession’s profile. Through the Workforce Strategy we will share your remarkable achievements to provide inspiration for young people joining the NHS by showcasing the wide range of skills it takes to care for patients.”
The profession had, Simon Corben reflected, ‘learned a lot’ in the past few months about how to develop additional estate very quickly; this would be reflected in the way infrastructure developments were managed in the future, while the Estates Collaboration Hub had shown its value in enabling the national EFM community to ‘articulate messages, and share ideas candidly, from the north-east to the south-west’.
Preparations and future planning Simon Corben said: “Now, as we enter Wave 2, we will be supporting you all as regards our preparations and future planning. However, before I update you on my team’s various workstreams, we should pause and pay tribute to the 34 colleagues within our community that have sadly lost their lives during the pandemic. They will not be forgotten.” Moving to discuss some of the ‘key current areas of focus’ for he and his team, Simon Corben said: “Continuing on with the theme of COVID resilience needs to be absolutely front and centre of what we do.” ‘Sadly’, with infection numbers starting to rise again, his team and the
IHEEM CEO, Pete Sellars (right), hosted the opening Digital Week webinar, and put a wide range of audience questions to Simon Corben, director and head of Profession, NHS Estates and Facilities, at NHS England and NHS Improvement.
wider estates and facilities community were already planning for Wave 2, with, for instance, works for the addition of 6,000 oxygenated beds under way. ‘Scenario planning’ was also well in hand, led by his colleague, Adrian Eggleton. He added: “We are also carefully considering how we should use the Nightingale hospitals in Wave 2.”
Operational issues Focusing on ‘some of the operational issues’ going forward, Simon Corben alluded to the ‘significant safety issue’ for hospitals built through the ‘Better Build Programme’ in the 1970s using Reinforced Aerated Concrete (‘RAC’) planks, which had only a ‘30-40-year shelf life’. His team was thus working with healthcare providers with such buildings in terms of future capital planning, and ‘the Strategic Review commitment’, to address the matter. Backlog maintenance remained ‘constantly at the forefront’ of his team’s
minds, he explained, in terms ‘of how we lobby hard to get sufficient expenditure to tackle it’. He was pleased, however, that in the current ‘acceleration works’ there was a focused workstream on Critical Infrastructure. He mentioned that his colleague, Mike Bellas, would be presenting on the Premises Assurance Model – which is now part of the NHS contract, and will be mandated by autumn 2021 – later in the day, and explained that NHSE/NHSI would shortly be advertising ‘for a number of key positions’, including Fire Safety Officer, and an Estates Resilience lead.
The Carter Programme There had been ‘very positive progress’ on the Carter Programme; while it had had to be ‘paused’ due to COVID-19, his team would be looking to ‘re-ignite it’ in 2021. He explained: “The team is starting to pull together case studies to see how we can bridge the gap, which currently
November 2020 Health Estate Journal 29
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