Collaborative engineering audit brings many rewards

A collaborative approach to fully auditing the backlog maintenance requirements and priorities for the engineering plant supplying the retained clinical estate at Walsall Manor Hospital has, the head of estates at the Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, Steve Lawley, explains, ‘brought numerous benefits’ to the Trust’s Estates team, the ‘hard FM’ provider, Skanska, and surveying partner, Oxhey Hall Consulting. Demonstrating the benefits of collaboration between three such parties, the year-long project has provided ‘a robust and structured set of data’ on current and anticipated backlog needs, identified where future capital will need to be targeted to keep key equipment running efficiently, and given the Estates team invaluable ‘hard facts’ on the condition of hospital plant to support future business cases.

Formed on 1 April, 2011 with the bringing together of Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust and NHS Walsall Community Health, Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust provides local general hospital and community services to around 260,000 people in Walsall and the surrounding area. Walsall’s only provider of NHS acute care, it offers both inpatient and outpatient services at the Walsall Manor Hospital, plus a wide range of services in the community. 

Walsall Manor Hospital houses the full range of district general hospital services. A £170 m development of the hospital’s Pleck Road site was completed in 2010, and, the Trust says, the continued upgrading of existing areas ensures that the acute healthcare facility has ‘state-ofthe-art’ operating theatres, treatment areas, and equipment, upon which to call. To discover more about a recent backlog maintenance audit that saw all of the engineering plant serving the hospital’s retained clinical estate surveyed by external surveyor, Oxhey Hall Consulting, and the resulting benefits, I met up at the site with Steve Lawley, John O’Sullivan, managing director at Oxhey Hall, Alan Walsh, senior implementation manager, and Mark Rogers, senior engineering manager, from Skanska.