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Northumberland Tyne & Wear Solutions Ltd
Challenge
Northumberland Tyne & Wear Solutions Ltd (formerly Northumberland Tyne & Wear NHS Trust) incorporates facilities that range in size from central hospitals to small community-based care facilities.
The Trust’s 70 facilities include Plummer Court, a drug rehabilitation centre, and Ferndene, a purpose-built in-patient centre which provides assessment and treatment for young people with complex health, emotional and behavioural needs, including those with a learning disability.
As a result, efficiently planning and co-ordinating monthly maintenance service visits across the Trust’s estate is a key challenge.
Solution
The services we provide include mechanical and electrical building services maintenance, building fabric maintenance, statutory inspection and testing and lifecycle project works. Our local team of 32 dedicated mobile engineers self-deliver over 95% of the services to the client.
These services are provided 24/7 and co-ordinated through Mitie’s central help desk. The help desk platform provides a comprehensive performance reporting system, enabling analysis and trends to be identified and acted upon efficiently.
Planning the monthly service visits is achieved through close co-ordination with the Estates Officers and Clinic Leads.
In order to carry out the annual statutory maintenance requirements the agreed method in residential properties is for the patients to be moved to another area or location. For certain low risk wards this is not possible, and works are carried out with patients present following full consultation and working alongside Trust staff.
Reactive works involve close liaison with the staff to co-ordinate the method required to carry out the works in terms of patient location and the most appropriate timing to avoid disruption whilst addressing the need to make the repair.
We also support the Trust’s sustainability agenda through optimisation of building environments and specific recycling / waste management programmes such as the collection and appropriate disposal of spent lamps.
Outcome
We provide added value by adopting a ‘can-do’ approach where employees adopt a see it, do it philosophy. Therefore, whilst on-site, our technicians will walk the building checking the assets. Any minor works identified will be rectified there and then (following consultation with Trust staff to ensure it will not be disruptive) or if not convenient, or more specialist, our technicians will report the issue to the help desk. This approach reduces disruption for the Trust facilities.
As part of the business continuous improvement regime we are developing our own bespoke hand-held technology solution for the engineers, supporting the efficient delivery of services. The system reduces the time of the engineers’ on-site administration, back-office data inputting and analysis whilst providing access to critical information which is stored on the central database. The technology provides real time data transfer between the engineers, the help desk and the planned maintenance system, allowing the Trust real time monitoring of issue resolution and maintenance activity.
The Ferndene project has been universally praised for offering a single access point for integrated pathways of care as well as strengthening their links with the local community. We play a key role in ensuring that the environment is maintained to support a safe, comfortable and healthy building. This is as a result of our technicians optimising the performance of the building services systems, providing our client with better control of the internal environmental conditions across the sites. This has led to an improved patient and user experience, as well as reductions to running costs.
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