IHEEM DIGITAL WEEK KEYNOTE
An ISS Healthcare team was asked to lead the soft FM services by NHS England at the NHS Nightingale Hospital London.
‘lobby hard and bring some of those mental health schemes to the fore’.
Robust planning
Another attendee asked what NHS England was doing around ensuring robust planning of new healthcare facilities based on population and needs. Simon Corben replied: “We will be looking, over the next few weeks, to gather all the schemes recently announced to really get a handle on where they are, and what they need to be doing as regards healthcare consistency across the portfolio. We really need to drive through that standardisation agenda, so we aren’t building bespoke facilities in every case. We need to deliver at pace and in a standardised way.” This linked to another question, from an architect, who asked whether existing strategic plans had been changed ‘to reflect the high uptake of virtual medical consultations now taking place nationally’. Simon Corben said: “One of the worst things that could come out of COVID is that we return to ‘business as usual’. We really must look hard at how we use our asset base, and how we can bring in digital technology to ensure that our assets are more productive, and our work / life balance is more effective. Space utilisation is, after all, a key element of our costs, and perhaps an avenue we can challenge ourselves on through other important initiatives, such as staff training and development. We are also starting to think about when the appropriate time is to start revisiting those STPs, or, as they are now called, ICS strategies, to see how we can utilise asset bases across the ICS, as opposed to by individual organisations, and really challenge ourselves on the use non-clinical support space.”
Another attendee asked whether the major update of DH technical standards would ‘incorporate the knowledge on the need for extra service space capacity’ gained during ‘Wave 1’ of the pandemic. The speaker said this depended on the guidance. He elaborated: “For instance, NHSE/NHSI believes the new cleaning standards are the right ones for ‘business as usual’, but having hit the pandemic,
The Royal Engineers provided their help and expertise to ETA Projects’ HV/LV infrastructure team at the NHS Nightingale Hospital London at ExCeL London.
these will need to change, with an increase in cleaning regimes NHS-wide.” Standards developed would need to ‘last the test of time’, and in the light of the pandemic, NHSE/NHSI was reviewing ‘each and every case’ to determine whether amendments were needed.
Supply chain capacity
Simon Corben was asked how the NHS’s supply chain capacity had been assessed to deliver the HIP programme and the 40 new hospital builds. He explained that there was ‘a market engagement’ due out shortly, while with the existing programme and profile, he believed there was ‘enough time to mobilise and skill up for suppliers to be ready for what comes in 2025’. He conceded, however, that it was ‘very difficult for a supplier to be convinced about healthcare infrastructure programmes when they only looked five years ahead’. Suppliers needed the assurance so they could begin to invest in modern methods of construction, by creating a ‘pipeline’ of components that can support that delivery of the capital programme.
Another delegate asked whether the standardisation regularly discussed might limit innovation. Simon Corben said: “I would argue that it doesn’t in fact do that. Take the Apple iPhone, a standard product rolled out at scale, which is refreshed and enhanced behind the scenes regularly with new features, and rolled out again. That is where we need to be within standardisation.”
‘Low-bidding contractors’ An Estates and Facilities Director asked how, with the number of major schemes on the horizon, the EFM community could better protect itself ‘against low-bidding’ contractors.
Simon Corben said the NEC 4 contract was one that provided the Estates community with that ‘assurance of price once we enter into that contract’. He added: “Regardless of the form of contract, the governance that sits around the programme is essential to managing the cost, and if you know you are buying cheap, don’t deflate your total capital
costs as a result. Ensure that you have sufficient contingency to deal with some of the headaches you might see. Clearly, with P2020 and P22, the transparency is there in the framework rates. When we get to a limit of Guaranteed Maximum Price, it is really important that we understand the risks, and ultimately what GMP means against that form of contract.”
Sharing lessons and successes Another attendee asked how NHSI/NHSI was working with other government departments ‘to share the amazing estates delivery successes’ during the COVID period, its intentions for standardisation, and ‘the challenge around delivering Net Zero Carbon’. Simon Corben explained that he sits on a cross-government board which discusses precisely this agenda; at a recent meeting he had spoken with other board members about how the Nightingale hospitals had been developed. He had also presented on frameworks such as P22, while education had some parallels with healthcare on the estates and facilities front, ‘particularly when we look at community care’. There was a lot, he said, that NHSE/NHSI could learn from education around scaling up of primary care, with ‘a real opportunity to go further and see how educational and primary care facilities could be similar in the way they are developed’. On Net Zero, the NHS was the greatest polluter, occupying 29 per cent of the government footprint, and the service thus had the greatest challenge, largely due to the age and scale of the estate.
With this, a very interesting ‘Q&A’ session ended, and Pete Sellars thanked Simon Corben for participating and fielding some challenging questions. He also thanked the audience for their interaction, and said he felt the online event had been ‘a fantastic start to Digital Week’.
hej
n All those keen to hear/view the presentations given during IHEEM’s Digital Week can access full recordings at:
www.healthcare-estates.com/webinars
November 2020 Health Estate Journal 33
©ISS Healthcare
©ETA Projects
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