MEDICAL GAS SYSTEMS


Competent Person trained Having already touched on SHJ’s service offering, James Forgan, who joined SHJ last November, (HEJ – March 2020), was keen to discuss what differentiates his Service team from that of competitors. He said: “All our engineers are Competent Person (MGPS) trained, and have strong experience of working across a range of piped medical gas equipment. This is key, because in this sector, you inevitably look after a range of different companies’ medical gas equipment. We can service systems from all manufacturers. Most of our healthcare sector plant is under one of our service contracts.” Stafford Scopes added: “In fact there is only one SHJ medical gas system out in the NHS not covered by an SHJ service agreement. With Gaoyong’s controller and HPC’s compressors, though, you really have to know what you are doing. Our medical air driers use a special desiccant mix, which includes a substance used to convert harmful carbon dioxide from car exhaust fumes to CO2


. If one of our medical gas


systems picks up carbon monoxide from the external atmosphere, it is turned to carbon dioxide and water. Other manufacturers don’t use this system, and we have encountered issues with wet air with some other medical gas systems. Our desiccant mix is a considerable innovation in our air driers.”


An HTM 02-01 minimum requirement James Forgan added: “There is, in fact, a minimum requirement for dryness of medical air as part of HTM 02-01, and our driers comfortably exceed that. All of our engineers have advanced distributor training from HPC, which gives us an unrivalled knowledge and understanding of its compressors. Other manufacturers typically use an industrial air drier design, adapted to use in a medical setting, whereas our drier is bespoke for medical air.”


By way of professional background, James Forgan explained that having gained a General Engineering BSc degree at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, he began his career with a seven-year spell as an Installation and Commissioning manager with staff attack alarm specialist, Pinpoint. He said: “Having relocated from Scotland to Chesterfield for the role – in which I covered the whole of the UK and Ireland – I left Pinpoint in 2005 to join Beacon Medaes, as Service manager. I spent seven years there, covering the UK, and providing worldwide technical support. In 2012, I left the company for a seven-year spell as UK Service manager at endoscope washer-disinfector manufacturer, Wassenberg. Then, last November, I joined SHJ. Having met Stafford, and heard about some of the company’s key developments, I realised how far SHJ had come in the seven years


Customer base trebled


Stafford Scopes reiterated that although until about three years ago, SHJ had been best known in the south-east of England, it now serves some 130 hospitals UK-wide, having effectively trebled its customer base. I asked the meeting participants what factors they believed external organisations – including existing NHS customers – would say made SHJ stand out. James Forgan said: “I think principally the competency of the team, and the support we offer, coupled to the back-up we provide via K’nect. We are also transparent in the information that we share with our Service customers. K’nect makes everything we do – from the PPM reports, to the call-outs, to the invoices and quotations – visible, so we have to offer a high level of service.” “We are proud too,” Stafford Scopes added, “that a number of our customers have been with us for anything from 20- 50 years. We are known for the reliability of both our equipment and our service. Hospitals also know that if they suddenly need help with a medical gas-related issue, they can come to us. We have won much of our work through word of mouth. We also offer an ‘emergency’ service, via which we can install hire plant very rapidly should, say, one of a hospital’s medical gas lines break down.”


Longevity and experience James Forgan said: “Since joining SHJ I have been impressed with the longevity of many of the staff, their excellent


‘‘


SHJ’s engineers have a fully stocked van holding spares; these include parts both for its own equipment, and for medical gas systems ‘from all the leading manufacturers’.


I had been out of the sector. It would be fair to say I was impressed.”


knowledge, and decades of experience.” Central to SHJ’s business strategy, and the quality of its ‘offer’ to the healthcare sector, is the comprehensive data that systems such as Emanate can now provide on customers’ medical gas systems. Stafford Scopes explained that a recent recruit, Liu Ping, is in the process of creating a ‘Knowledge Base’ for the company. He elaborated: “This entails her working to get right to the nuts and bolts of all the equipment we service and maintain, including linking in all the Operation and Maintenance manuals, and ensuring we can obtain all the parts we might need. She is also building up a history of engineers visiting site, and the error codes they might encounter. By identifying and entering onto our database what such codes signify, we can share the data with all our engineers to simplify their task when they are attending to a breakdown. This data will be available to them via K’nect; they all have a tablet on which to do their service reports and feed back information to our back-office computer system. We may also make it accessible to some customers.”


James Forgan added: “All the site and plant information – such as serial numbers, locations, equipment etc. – is ‘synced’ back to the office, and integrated onto the portal, which is invaluable service-wise. A Trust-employed healthcare engineer, perhaps new to a hospital site, can also access the data if, say, a particular component is not functioning optimally, and can then see what work, servicing, and PPM have been undertaken, and look for any ‘clues’ to the cause.”


Although until about three years ago, SHJ had been best known in the south-east of England, it now serves some 130 hospitals UK-wide


April 2020 Health Estate Journal 21


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