CAFM systems can ease estate management

Staff across the NHS, including the healthcare estates and facilities and healthcare engineering personnel who maintain and look after healthcare facilities, are increasingly being asked to improve efficiencies while at the same time cutting costs – requests that can seem at odds with each other. This is is all at a time when compliance challenges are greater than ever, which can be made even harder when managing an estate with numerous buildings.

There are already statutory reporting mechanisms in place that include sections about estates and facilities. The Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC) system collects quantitative data on the costs, operational aspects, and performance metrics of running an NHS estate, while the Premises Assurance Model (PAM) covers a broader range of qualitative aspects like governance, patient experience, and statutory compliance, across different technical areas.

Digitalising an estate will make statutory reporting much more efficient, while also supporting compliance and cost reduction.

Reliance on ‘old’ technology

As things stand, many NHS Trusts continue to rely on old technology, and traditional methods of data storage and communication, when it comes to estates management. Digitalisation of the healthcare service offers a solution to these current challenges. By integrating computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) software into existing operating systems, NHS estates teams can save time and money in the day-to-day running of a healthcare facility, while ensuring that nothing ‘falls through the cracks’ with regard to compliance.

CAFM systems help to centralise and streamline the work that takes place within healthcare facilities. Asset management, building and maintenance planning, and health and safety, are all critical to optimising the efficiency of facilities management services. At SWG, we understand that the healthcare sector has unique requirements, driven by strict regulatory control and the need to manage specialist equipment, and we thus offer modules specifically designed to meet these needs, including medical device management and cleanliness standards. 

Asset management

A huge part of the NHS, after the staff, is the broad spectrum of equipment and different operating systems that enable Trusts to deliver efficient and high-quality care. Ensuring that these are all functioning and up to date is essential to ensuring the smooth running of these services. By using CAFM systems, management staff are able to keep track of all the assets and equipment on the wards and in other clinical and non-clinical spaces, and their current status. Staff are able to report equipment failure or request services (for example, cleaning) efficiently, via a self-service interface, in a matter of a few clicks. Once reported, a task is created and dispatched to the relevant engineers to keep the maintenance of healthcare spaces and equipment up to date. 

Audits

Audits are an essential way to manage compliance and report issues. With CAFM software, undertaking an audit is much more straightforward. The ability to ensure that items are in the right place, and to report when they are not, means staff have all the necessary tools at their disposal to be able to deliver appropriate care to their patients. Completing and storing audits with CAFM means facilities management personnel can easily access the data, both past and present, and carry out necessary inspections that help identify which areas need attention.

CAFM software offers a simple way to gather data and feedback conveniently, such as during asset management checks and audits. Forms and checklists can be created and customised, and can show what is required of the FM operative at the time of the audit, to ensure that all elements of the task are covered. Via a mobile app, onsite data on the current effectiveness of operations can be easily and quickly collected, which in turn ensures that any pressing issues can be investigated as matters of urgency. 

Health and safety

Health and safety compliance is clearly of paramount importance for those responsible for managing healthcare estates. With CAFM software, all data is held centrally, and can be accessed quickly and easily. Furthermore, the ability to use a forms tool inherent in CAFM for relevant health and safety work means that staff can report issues or concerns, which then results in the relevant staff being alerted of the need to address them. With the help of CAFM tools, health and safety work can become a simple procedure, instead of an ever-growing headache.

Mobile work management

One of the most convenient aspects of operating with CAFM is how it can be readily integrated with smartphones or tablet devices. Jobs can be instantly dispatched to staff; they can ‘pick these up’ on their mobile via the CAFM app, and attend site to assist. This saves considerable time, reduces the administration burden, and ensures that particular tasks can be reported and responded to immediately, reducing rectification times.

Right across the NHS, keeping items stocked up and available at all times is essential to the delivery of great patient care. From the basics – such as scrubs and rubber gloves – to essential medicines, efficient stock management is key if healthcare facilities are to run smoothly. Most CAFM solutions offer integrated stock management features, so that stock levels can be monitored, items requisitioned, and alerts set up when an item is in low stock so that more can be purchased before a shortage occurs.

Scheduling and management

CAFM can assist with shift management, personnel data management, and scheduling around staff annual leave, sick days, and training appointments. By having all aspects of staff logistics available in one platform, users can reduce stress and improve management. Intelligent job allocation – for example where jobs are sent to the closest operative via a GPS system – helps to minimise travel times, and ensures that issues are addressed promptly.

Medical device management and specialist healthcare cleaning

Ensuring the reliability of medical devices is critical both for patient safety, and to the effective running of the health service. Via CAFM, maintenance staff can streamline medical equipment management for a wide range of devices – for example ventilators, X-ray machines, and CT scanners. Automatic job assignment using a mobile app reporting system ensures that prioritisation of equipment is maintained to high standards. Similarly, categorisation of work areas by level of risk ensures that staff know the standards of cleaning that must be maintained. 

•  How CAFM helped Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust

SWG has supported many NHS Trusts in managing their healthcare estates, including Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, which provides a wide range of mental health, physical health, and learning disability services for people across Hampshire. The Trust benefits from using QFM, our CAFM software, to rapidly co-ordinate and control maintenance services and provide a single point of contact via its Facilities help desk. Our aim was to improve communications between remote staff and customers across a wide geographic area – the Trust operates 280 sites.

Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust needed a completely centralised system that could help with its maintenance systems, in order to ensure the ongoing provision of high-quality health services. The Trust’s existing system had been in place for more than 20 years, was no longer meeting its needs, and only managed maintenance requests by facilities staff on a region-by-region basis. 

The Trust chose SWG due to our software’s ability to support a busy helpdesk with a high volume of calls, and the system’s extensive reporting capabilities. The QFM app allows the Trust’s help desk to dispatch work orders to its engineers and contractors in real time. Field-based operatives can update the details of their job on their mobile phones too, from notification to completion. This has helped to reduce the administrative load on the helpdesk team, allowing the team to devote more attention and focus to current problems happening at the Trust’s various healthcare facilities.

Dynamic forms reporting tool

The Trust also uses QFM’s dynamic forms reporting tool to help keep track of asset inspections, building surveys, health and safety checks, and customer satisfaction surveys. All of these services and features of the system demonstrate how the digitalisation of the healthcare world can lead to genuine improvements in the efficiency of the sector. 

BIM software: what is it,and do you need it?

Building information modelling, commonly referred to as BIM, is a process that creates, and digitally manages, information for a built asset throughout its lifecycle – from initial design and construction, through to ongoing operation. Whether a building was newly constructed using BIM, or BIM data is retrospectively created for an existing building (via laser scanning and modelling to create accurate 3D models), CAFM software can offer significant benefits for leveraging this valuable data during the operational phase. 

BIM models help Estates and Facilities managers gain access to a wealth of information that wouldn’t otherwise be as accessible. Data about building fabric, assets, and components, enables FMs to easily see measurements, locations, access points, and information tags such as acceptable temperature range, room usage data, and more. This data can be used to create a comprehensive asset database within CAFM software. 

Once the asset database has been established, 2D and 3D BIM models can be viewed within the CAFM system, to show building detail such as asset location, history, components, warranties, manuals, and in-progress works – including repairs. BIM allows Facilities managers and their teams to access the relevant data that they need readily and with a high degree of detail. 

BIM data within CAFM supports maintenance work by allowing engineers to view assets via an intuitive 3D viewing tool, ‘peeling back’ layers such as walls or suspended ceilings to see equipment that may be hidden in real life. This dramatically improves the knowledge needed to diagnose problems and resolve issues, reducing rectification times, and therefore minimising disruption to the day-to-day operation of busy healthcare environments. 

Summary

All the data required to make informed FM decisions already exists within your building; to make positive change, it must be accurately collected, analysed efficiently, and acted upon. 

By leveraging the power of CAFM software, there is the potential to make managing  the healthcare estate highly efficient, which can in turn boost the morale of NHS staff, and ensure the wellbeing of patients. Productivity increases, and role-based stress decreases, when FM personnel can create an environment that allows clinical staff to perform their work in a well-managed space. Clinical teams will be healthier, happier, and better equipped, to help patients and deliver the best quality of care.