Addressing delegates from across the healthcare engineering and estate management sector in a morning keynote at the IHEEM Wales Regional Conference at the ICC Wales in May, Stuart Douglas, Director of NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership – Specialist Estates Services, focused on some of the key priorities to ensure that Wales has a fit-for-purpose healthcare estate. Areas covered included the need to make the optimal use of under- or unused buildings and land, the challenges of reaching Net Zero, and some of the existing and emerging tools for better managing the over two million square metres of space that currently make up the country’s NHS estate.
Speaking immediately following the morning' first keynote, given remotely by Judith Paget, Director General for Health and Social Services and NHS Wales CEO, on 7 May, Stuart Douglas told the conference the key areas he would be like to explore would be tools for management — with 'the estate-sensitive subject of surveys and risk management', space utilisation and rationalisation, decarbonisation and Net Zero, and 'probably a little bit of good news at the end'. Beginning with 'tools for management of the estate', he said that 'across Wales and probably the rest of the UK', there was 'a wide and varied approach' to managing the estate. While some organisations still used manual systems supported by a range of databases, spreadsheets, and work process calls, others had adopted 'more modern, active', computer-aided CAFM systems, which, by comparison, would enhance efficiency and quality, and give assurance of compliance across the estate. He said: "For our Health Boards to have any assurance of adhering to modern standards of estates and facilities management, we need to adopt the latter across the board."
Looking at 'the situation in England', Stuart Douglas said NHS Wales SSP had appreciated having sight of the recently issued NHSE draft Estatecode, HBN 00-08, with its minimum asset data requirements, and the associated data management systems which should be adopted. He explained: "The minimum dataset they're saying we should all have comprises up-to-date drawings of the estate and engineering services in CAD format, a current asset register, updated within the last two years, testing and inspection records, risk registers, and risk assessments and Safe Systems of Work for each asset." It was also implicit — he said — that six-facet survey data be included. He said he was 'really encouraged' that colleague Health Boards and Trusts across Wales were 'ahead of the game', and exploring things like the introduction of 3D imaging of their estate via, for example, the Matterport tool.
The speaker noted that systems for operating estate were categorised in the draft Estatecode as comprising Computer Aided Facilities Management, computerised maintenance management, and integrated workplace management, with 'quite an overlap across the three'.
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