MEDICAL GAS SERVICES
Adam Clark undertaking a dryer service.
customer we were selling to in Portugal.” His next step was to join a company which is today a competitor, medical gas pipeline installation specialist, K&H Medical, where he worked for eight years, starting as an Installation engineer, and then as both Maintenance manager and Contracts manager, before establishing a Professional Service Division for the business, undertaking AP work. He explained: “I then left K&H and went to work as an associate director for another medical gas pipeline contractor, D&L Medical, where I helped to build the company up to a good size. However, feeling by this juncture that I wished to branch out on my own, using an approach and methodology based on my military experience, I started up a business called Medical Gas Consultancy in London in 2001. At this business, I principally undertook Authorised Person work, and acted as an AE for the Ministry of Defence, which entailed me visiting military hospitals as the Authorising Engineer – a role that in essence didn’t then exist in the NHS.” This AE work for ‘the military’ took Rob McCrea to many locations worldwide. He said: “I was undertaking system design and management; the latter typically involved policies, procedures, training, and compliance auditing, as well as training of military ‘estates’ and engineering personnel on the installation, use, and maintenance, of medical gas systems. This was an easy role for me, having already served in the Army. I was also one of the few engineers with the necessary clearance to undertake medical gas system work in such facilities.”
A move to Manchester
In 2009, having found the ‘London life’ very stressful, and having also recovered from a brain tumour and subsequent brain surgery at London’s Royal Free Hospital while with D&L, Rob McCrea decided life in the capital was no longer for him. He said: “I thus sold my house and business in London, and moved up to my
Ryan Clark carrying out the PPM on a vacuum plant.
original family roots in Manchester, where my father came from.” He continued: “One evening up in Manchester, I met up with an ex-colleague, Michael George, for a drink, and we came up with the idea of starting up a new business in Manchester. I knew him from the medical gas arena, and indeed he was the previous owner of compressor installation and maintenance specialist, Compressor Engineering. The meeting resulted in the formation of Medical Gas Services.”
Rob McCrea and Michael George started the business up in an old mill house in Rochdale, operating from a Portakabin as an office. He said: “Initially there were no other staff, and we offered purely Authorising Engineer and Authorised Persons work. We had both had significant experience of working in the healthcare sector, and on establishing the firm, used our contacts to win work from a good base of hospitals and other healthcare facilities both across England, and overseas. Within six months the workload was too much for just the two of us, and much of our work was in the north-east, so we recruited another staff member, Michael Sayers, a former Atlas
Copco medical gas engineer based in Newcastle, who is still with us today. We brought him in to train hospital personnel up to AP level, and to manage the north- east hospitals.” (The Authorised and Competent Person roles, Rob McCrea explained, were introduced in HTM 2022, reinforced with the publication of the revised and updated HTM 2022 1997 and 1999, and the AE role was brought into the NHS with HTM 02-01 in 2006).
Adam Clark servicing a compressor.
Dental air compressor business In the company’s early days, nearly all its work was undertaken in NHS hospitals, but in 2010, Rob McCrea and Michael George decided to purchase a company called Dental Air Services, which provided medical air for dentists’ surgeries, back from Atlas Copco, the business having been sold to the latter as part of the sale of Compressor Engineering. Rob McCrea explained: “Dental Air Services was at the time being run out of Rochdale, with its own assembly and test facility, and also offered installation and maintenance of dental sector compressors. We later moved it to its own offices, in Salford Quays, and it has since been run as a separate subsidiary there. One of the UK leaders in its field, it now serves dental surgeons throughout the UK. On founding Dental Air,” he continued, “we sought to establish and build a business that doesn’t just sell compressors, but will also take adoption of the existing compressors in dental surgeries and service and maintain them.” The company can also lease compressors, offers a 24-hour breakdown response, and guarantees a replacement in the event of compressor failure. The compressors not only go into private dentists’ surgeries, but also to hospitals’ dental departments. They run the drills, operate pneumatic dentists’ chairs, and are used to keep patients’ mouths clean and comfortable during dental work. Dental air has a European Pharmacopoea monograph, equivalent to medical air in quality, but less onerous on moisture content.
May 2020 Health Estate Journal 63
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