Healthcare Facilities Consortium (HFC), which has served the NHS for over 15 years, says those familiar with its services will be aware that it is now ‘moving away from providing software solutions in a more strategic direction to focus on compliance and the demands placed on healthcare FM professionals to meet these stringent conditions’.
New products and services being launched over the next few months include:
Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) – available now
The HFC’s 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. The HFC says: “Tried and tested elsewhere in the public sector, our FRA product is based on an expanded and improved version of the PAS 79 Fire Risk Assessment methodology. We are now close to finalising details of a new arrangement that will significantly expand our network of qualified assessors.”
Critical Asset Maintenance (CAM) – available soon
‘A little later this year’ the HFC will launch a new product that it says ‘utilises innovative technology to monitor fire detection devices for audit or maintenance purposes’. It adds: “The recording and analysis of this data also produces sound evidential information for accurate and effective compliance, and contract and budgetary control, reliably providing business case support for Board-level decisions.”
Academy – available soon
Soon to be launched is 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, with details set for release over the next few weeks.
Communications – from July
HFC is to give itself ‘a brand new look’, with a new logo, re-designed publicity, an ‘all-new’ newsletter format, a completely redesigned website, and new social media channels to offer new ways to keep in touch and interact with the organisation. As the HFC puts it: “We’ll be communicating more often and in different ways.”
Improved performance analysis and FM document exchange – available now
The HFC says it will continue to offer subscribers its popular Performance Analysis and FM Document Exchange products, both of which it plans to improve during the coming year. The Consortium explains: “We are looking at how we can present our annual Performance Analysis data in quicker, more interactive ways, and at 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, to provide even better value for money.”
For more information, e-mail: info@hfc.org.uk, or T: 01327 227166.
