At Healthcare Estates 2025, HEJ’s editor Niamh Marriott spoke with the team from RFL Property Services, who were highly commended for the 2025 Consultancy of the Year award. Andrew Panniker, Managing director; Laura Wilkes, Programme manager, and Darryn Kerr, NHP Commission lead, discussed their award-winning projects, innovation in healthcare estates, and the challenges and opportunities facing the NHS estate workforce.
Can you tell me a little bit about the journey and the vision behind your highly commended win? What was the vision for the project, how did it evolve, and what were the key challenges along the way?
Andrew Panniker: Okay, so what I'm going to do is tell you a bit about the RFL PS element first, and then we'll go into the specific projects, which are the CDCs and the NHP — New Hospital Programme. That's when I'll bring in my colleagues here as we talk.
RFL PS started in 2018. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Free Group. We started with seven people, and now, on the consultancy side, we are up to about 70 people, so we've grown rapidly in that time. The good thing about our journey and vision is that we are largely all healthcare professionals who live and breathe healthcare. We get a deep understanding of working within clinical environments, how to get the information we need to make projects successful from all the clinicians who work in the hospitals. Understanding the pathways, the activities, and the patient needs is critical.
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