WATER HYGIENE & SAFETY Relevance of previous career experience
Vince Tennison is the Trust’s representative for the Premises Assurance Model, and is on the PAM National Steering Group. He said: “We have been working in line with the principles of PAM – which incorporates 46 individual self- assessment questions – for the past four years. This very much links in with my career background. For example, I have considerable experience with self-assessment in the education sector. At Hull College, I worked both as a Curriculum Leader, and subsequently, a Partnership Funding Manager – roles which exposed me to Government and Ofsted quality compliance. While there, I went out into industry, visiting organisations, and consulting on LEAN manufacturing and business improvement techniques. Earlier, I spent 11 years at Armitage Shanks/Ideal Standard, working from the shopfloor upwards, culminating in me becoming its Quality manager. When its Hull site closed down in 2006, I retrained and got my A1 Assessor’s Award, then becoming a Business Improvement Training consultant for Hull College. I worked my way up there from an NVQ Assessor training consultant to a Partnership Funding manager. At the time Hull College was the UK’s fifth largest college, with an Ofsted rating of
manager, or head of IPPC, to generate reports which they can then, for example, present at Water Safety Group meetings, or for inspection by the CQC. Users of both the Pseudomonas and Legionella L8guard modules pay Digital Missives an annual licence fee, normally based on the number of users.
Help getting the system set up When I met Vince Tennison, the Estates & Facilities Information & Compliance manager at Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, at Scunthorpe Hospital, to discuss the Compliance Team’s successful experience with L8guard, he explained that the department head at the time had introduced both the Legionella and Pseudomonas L8guard modules in 2015, enlisting Digital Missives’ help in getting them set up across all three of the Trust’s hospitals – the Scunthorpe General Hospital, the Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby, and the Goole and District Hospital. He said: “When I joined the Trust in 2018, the Compliance Department – which had been created by the director of Estates & Facilities, Jug Johal – was two years’ old; it is part of the Estates and Facilities Directorate. I report to Bill Parkinson, who is the head of Safety & Statutory Compliance. We have Trust- wide oversight for compliance at all three sites”.
Of the organisation’s adoption of L8guard, he added: “Prior to 2015, the existing paper-based system for recording and analysing low-use outlet flushing had worked reasonably well. However, it was pretty time- and labour- intensive for those undertaking flushing to fill in a paper form, report to the primary or secondary contact on the ward with
46 Health Estate Journal March 2020
‘Outstanding’, and access to considerable funding. Many training organisations UK-wide were accessing this money, and part of my role was to ensure that they were meeting the Skills Funding Agency’s compliance regulations, and looking at their Ofsted credentials and levels of assurance. “I was subsequently recruited by a railway training company, Intertrain, which had national reach, where I worked for four years as an associate director for Quality & Compliance, before leaving to join the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust in mid-2018. The rail industry is a highly regulated industry, and I was tasked with really looking at its health and safety, quality of delivery, and the compliance of working within the sector. The business was required to secure the ISO 9001 (2015) quality standard, and OHSAS 18001 health and safety accreditation, as well as the ISO 14001 environmental standard. You can therefore appreciate – from such work – that my experience encompasses elements including health and safety, facilities management, training compliance, and self-assessment – all of which are fundamental to NHS PAM, and to my role here at the Trust.”
Vince Tennison, Estates & Facilities Information & Compliance manager at Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, and Compliance Admin officer, Emma Drewery.
the data, and for the latter to then send the forms back to the Compliance Team. Then, somebody had to input all the data manually, and, of course, they had to analyse it.”
A worthwhile investment Recognising that there must be a more efficient, less resource-intensive means of recording low-use water outlet flushing, and then chasing up poor compliers, the Compliance Team heard about L8guard, and contacted Digital Missives to install it. Vince Tennison said: “It has certainly proven itself a worthwhile investment. In the past four years, with L8guard’s use, our hospitals have achieved between 95 and 97 per cent consistent flushing
compliance. However, we must target 100 per cent, as all it takes is one outlet. There are still occasionally outliers with low return rates – primarily where staff migration occurs – but the ability to easily access a wealth of accurate, up-to-date data on which outlets are being flushed compliantly, and which are not, makes chasing up non-compliers, and, if necessary, escalating repeated failures, much more targeted.”
‘Data-rich, but information-poor’ Vince Tennison added: “Of course, with any software system, you can be data-rich, but information-poor; but with L8guard, the opposite applies. Each outlet covered by either flushing compliance software
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