Training tomorrow’s estates teams

HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, spoke to Stephen Lloyd, and to several of his training colleagues for a new ‘Essentials for Estates’ course being launched next month by Eastwood Park to address some of the ‘skills gaps’, to discover where they feel the biggest challenges lie for tomorrow’s healthcare estates teams, and where the training focus should be.

 When I spoke with Stephen Lloyd, he said two of key questions exercising his mind, given the continuing loss of expertise from healthcare estates teams, as tightening budgets, and a generally ageing workforce, led to many such teams contracting in size, were: ‘Where is the sector’s longterm sustainable succession planning?’, and ‘How are the skills of the future going to be developed?’ He said: “Questions have to be asked if estates and facilities management skills are being eroded on this scale NHS-wide. In the case I have alluded to, I know one of the replacement staff is being brought in from industry, and is in his ‘fifties’, without a specialist healthcare background. This begs the question: ‘Where is the long-term planning and forward-thinking strategy for retaining valuable expertise, while integrating this alongside fresh ideas for the future of our hospitals?’ Short-term management decisions are affecting the capability of estates departments to provide a safe, fit-for-purpose, environment for patients.”

A pressurised environment
Stephen Lloyd is the lead tutor on ‘Essentials for Estates’1 (HEJ – June 2012), one of the latest courses to be launched by Eastwood Park, which tackles ‘the changing role of the estates officer’. Leading the development and delivery of Eastwood Park’s estates and facilities management suite of courses, the Chartered Engineer, Authorising Engineer, fellow of IHEEM, and CIBSE member, has extensive knowledge of his subject, gained through many years’ experience in NHS estates and facilities management roles. Today he operates as an independent estates and facilities management consultant working with Eastwood Park, with specialist skills including change and carbon management. He says the new ‘Essentials for Estates’ training has been developed for aspiring and current estates officers ‘to develop the skills they need to tackle the pressurised environment in an estates team today’. “Estates teams need to attract good people, and invest in them, above all equipping them with the right skills, and therefore helping to demonstrate that they are truly valued,” he explains. “Unfortunately, the reality is that they often feel undervalued, and frustrated that they cannot deliver the service to the standards they would wish. This often leads to low morale.