CONSTRUCTION
Near right: Stuart Dalton asked: “Where are all these pressure points?”
Far right: Trevor Rogers of LABC said: “In terms of your Principal Designer and Principal Contractor, that’s obviously not HRB- related; it’s across the board, and we’re finding issues with duty-holders not wanting to take on the responsibility, and unsure of their role.”
pressure points?’, and ‘Where can we see them in the next two, three, five, or 10 years using robust healthcare planning based on projected service use, demographic change, and standard changes?’, and then understanding the fabric of the estate. But then,” Dean Payton continued, “is there a wider need for all estates to be spatially captured in three dimensions? We can’t necessarily open up the building fabric in live clinical spaces, but understanding what passive fire protection there is, and having a robust fire strategy, will go a long way towards de-risking future projects and assisting with the Trust’s obligations under the RRO. We do, though, have various technologies to capture data on the estate, and then undertake investigations around that to arrive at a ‘single source of truth’. So, when the Trusts obtain funding, there is a body of work ready to build from – including the building height and storey count for determining HRB status. Non-HRB projects still require the rigour to evidence and document duty-holder competence, manage and monitor building regulation compliance, and provide compliance declarations and other requirements discussed as part of today’s roundtable. “So,” Dean Payton added, “without acknowledging
these activities, and sufficient ‘as constructed’ information to de-risk as far as practicable, along with the more onerous administrative processes, programme implications might push a project from one financial year into the next. I can imagine many projects might stop before they even start, because the funding has gone. It will be interesting to see how Trusts address this.” Steve Crow of Clarion said: “In terms of technology supporting that, we have a client who provides a technology solution to the NHS estate, to enable Trusts to ensure that contractors that might be about to refurbish or update the hospital’s fire systems have the appropriate competences, training, and accreditations, helping the NHS to reduce and manage risks. I wonder though – with the construction sector constrained by skills shortages – whether we will need to start bringing more resource in from overseas? This software solution will be particularly critical in ensuring that the workforce has the right skills and competencies to be working on site. In a way, I can see technology coming to the rescue in such situations.”
A lack of existing data Steve Batson said: “In my experience, Trusts have little to no existing information on their estate, nor – often – on what’s happened between refurbishments and extensions and alterations. The contractor or a consultant may hold it for them, and at the end all the information gets stuck on a CD or disk and is simply placed in a cupboard. So it’s about upskilling that Trust, or the building asset owner, on how they might best use their estate-related data.” Dean Payton said: “Due to the sheer enormity of the NHS estate, will they need a central data repository to maintain the ‘golden thread’ in the ownership of the NHS?
26 Health Estate Journal October 2024
Could a common data environment be linked with PAM and ERIC? There needs to be a central location for it. How, for example, does the Fire Service access this information when they arrive on site? Where is everything stored?” Stuart Dalton said: “Does the data all end up piecemeal? Getting that performance level criteria set and standardised allows innovation. You can use any system, but if it gives you a common look, feel, and structure of information coded to RICS standards or similar, it opens the playing field for something consistent. The NHS is generally not keen to be solution-specific, locking, say, an Estates team, into long, arduous contracts, but would rather provide the criteria for what the software solution does, and then allow systems to integrate and collaborate. There’s got to be a way to solve that problem, because I don’t think anyone would thank the NHS for going to a single solution-provider.” Hoare Lee’s Connie Campbell added: “The healthcare sector can be notoriously sluggish, and doesn’t have the greatest IT infrastructure. We could, however, take data models from other sectors; anyone who’s done a DfEE or MoD project will know that they use digital twins, and COBie data, and are very specific about the level of detail they need for every drawing or 3D model. I don’t think it would necessarily be that hard to apply a similar logic to hospital projects, but it could take a long time, because they’re large estates. The data would probably come in piecemeal, but eventually you’d hopefully end up with a single model.”
A masterplanning standpoint Steve Batson said: “This is interesting where – from a masterplanning standpoint – on the one hand you have the physical estate, but actually, because it is also about healthcare activities, healthcare planning is involved too. It’s thus interesting that the discussion currently is both about the legal obligations under the Building Safety Act, but also the funding with the Integrated Care Boards to understand their healthcare activity over time, and managing their estate to assure its compliance. Equally, from a fire safety and estate evidence perspective, there is an overlap, and it’s agnostic, because healthcare activity – public or private sector – is a healthcare activity. We don’t necessarily have the answers today, but there’s a further debate as to how other sectors, such as education, have used digital assurance of compliance, and with the Building Safety Act that obviously must now be done to a granular level.” Steve Crow said: “Just thinking about Connie’s point – as to whether healthcare can learn from other sectors; historically I’ve worked in the nuclear and oil and gas sectors, with really high-risk installations. The level of risk assessment, for instance, that went into the complex nuclear infrastructure at Sellafield in Cumbria – which entailed using the Monte Carlo risk assessment to look
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