The Healthcare Facilities Consortium (HFC), which has served the NHS for over 15 years, is keen to emphasise to those unaware of its recent change of strategic direction, that it is ‘moving away from providing software solutions to focus on compliance, and the demands placed on healthcare facilities management professionals to meet these stringent conditions’.
The Consortium says 2013/14 will be ‘a watershed year’ for it, with the creation of a new range of products and services that will ‘continue to offer NHS managers help in meeting some of the demands placed upon them by the modern health service’.
New products and services being launched over coming months include:
Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) – available now
The HFC’s fire risk assessment (FRA) product comes in several variations – from a fully managed service, to a ‘software only’ solution. Surveys are conducted by qualified fire engineers and ex-fire service personnel, and the collected data is subject to a three-stage Quality Assurance process to ensure its accuracy, completeness, and integrity. ‘Tried and tested’ elsewhere in the public sector, the FRA product is based on ‘an expanded and improved’ version of the PAS 79 Fire Risk Assessment methodology.
Critical Asset Maintenance (CAM)
‘A little later’ this year the HFC will launch a brand new product that it says ‘utilises innovative technology to monitor fire detection devices for audit or maintenance purposes’. The recording and analysis of this data will reportedly produce ‘sound evidential information for accurate and effective compliance, and contract and budgetary control, reliably providing business case support for Board-level decisions’.
Academy
Also being launched soon will be a training and mentoring facility that will provide OFQUAL-accredited courses, seminars, and events, for relevant FM-related topics. This will include work on performance management using ERIC and other relevant data to assist members to hone their efficiency. Courses are currently being devised, and details will be publicised over the next few weeks.
Communications – available from June
The HFC said: “We are giving ourselves a brand new look, including a new logo, redesigned publicity, an all-new newsletter format, and a completely redesigned website, and will be embracing new social media channels to offer new ways to keep in touch and interact with us. We will be communicating more often, and in different ways.”
Improved performance analysis and FM document exchange
The HFC will continue to offer subscribers its ‘popular’ Performance Analysis and FM Document Exchange products, both in improved form, during the coming year. The organisations says: “We are looking at how we can present our annual Performance Analysis data in quicker and more interactive ways, as well as improving the currency of the documents in the FM Document Exchange. We have also removed the limit on nominated points of contact per member organisation, serving to provide even better value for money.”
For more information, e-mail: info@hfc.org.uk, or telephone: 01327 227166.
