ENGINEERING & DIGITISATION
Service partnerships can find untapped benefits
Addressing the sizeable NHS maintenance backlog is driving the need for service partnerships that provide insight to support uptime and map out a path to modernisation and Net Zero, says Kas Mohammed, VP of Services for the UK and Ireland at Schneider Electric.
Healthcare facilities face unique challenges when compared with other types of facility, as they need consistent high availability of assets and systems so that patient care is never compromised. At the same time, the NHS faces a maintenance backlog of £11.6 bn, a figure which is currently growing. This puts strain onto teams as they strive to maintain complex systems alongside legacy assets.
Alongside this full-time responsibility, healthcare estates and facilities management teams also face intense pressure to increase efficiency, improve sustainability, and bring outdated systems up to modern standards within limited budgets. One way to reduce the strain is to use a service-partner to provide technical expertise and insight where and when it is needed. This will extend the reach of in-house teams without taking them away from their ‘day jobs’. A partner can advise on the status and condition of existing equipment, map out a route to increase automation or save energy, support modernisation of key assets, provide 24/7 data-driven support, deliver training, and supply spare parts.
Helping to ‘overcome the skills gap’ Such a service-partner can overcome the skills gap, especially in niche areas where it is difficult to recruit, train, and retain skilled workers. As they cover a wide range of facilities and industries, a service-partner will have a large team of technical experts – and this gives them the scale to provide a career path for people in specialist areas. An estates and facilities manager can gain most advantage with a service-partner that is technology- agnostic. That means that they will bring broad knowledge across many electrical technologies from different vendors. As a result, they can help to get the best out of existing assets. Working with such a partner will guarantee healthcare FM teams access to those skills without the HR overheads. Whichever direction a healthcare facility goes in its digital transformation journey, they will be supported with qualified and certified engineers that directly meet the needs of the site. Using a service-partner is a low-risk way for teams to apply the latest technologies to existing infrastructure. Typically, maintenance-as-a-service starts with an expert in electrical technology visiting a site to audit the condition and criticality of assets and look for untapped efficiencies. They will produce an audit report that provides a
snapshot view of the site that the estates and facilities manager can use to understand the current state of their systems. This provides a baseline to map out a route to achieve targets for uptime, energy use, and modernisation.
One important benefit is that a partner can draw on
experience and insight from other facilities. This means that they can quickly identify risks and issues, and then recommend solutions. A recent whitepaper highlighted this by analysing 400 electrical audit reports from industrial and commercial buildings around the world. It found that 89 per cent of sites faced electrical risk because they lacked a complete single line diagram. This is a simple diagram that shows the layout of a facility’s electrical systems, and is perhaps the most important foundation for electrical maintenance. Without an up-to-date and accurate single line diagram, estates and facilities manager may be putting operators and system continuity at risk, and in turn, compromising on patient care. For example, an operator may not be certain whether they’ve isolated the right circuit or whether critical equipment is connected downstream.
Highlighting priorities The big output of an audit is that it will highlight priorities and recommend actions. One recommendation might be to digitise the single line diagram so that the in-house team can update it in real time. Another recommendation could be installing sensors to gather data from critical equipment. This data can then be used to feed the digital single line diagram, making it into a digital twin of the real-world facility.
October 2025 Health Estate Journal 87
Schneider Electric explains that, ‘typically, maintenance-as-a-service starts with an expert in electrical technology visiting a site to audit the condition and criticality of assets and look for untapped efficiencies’.
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