Speaking at last October’s Healthcare Estates 2010 conference in Manchester, Peter Haggarty, assistant director, Health Facilities Scotland, outlined some of the key steps and priorities for large healthcare providers seeking to establish and implement an effective asset management strategy, focusing particularly on work ongoing in this area in the Scottish public health service.
While any radical change to a large healthcare organisation’s existing asset management practices could be “challenging”, both for the organisation itself, and for its staff, with “sufficient planning, persistence, and support”, such changes could, he told delegates, often result in “unanticipated benefits”. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.
Peter Haggarty began his Healthcare Estates address by giving delegates a definition of “asset management” (which he explained was also sometimes referred to as “strategic asset management”) from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which, in 2008, described it as “the process by which organisations account for, monitor, and manage, their land, buildings, and equipment, in order to align them with their corporate goals and values, and structure them in a way that best meets the organisation’s interests”. There had already, he said, been at least 30 separate reviews conducted on the topic of effective asset management, which provided useful guidance and a divergence of opinion on some of the optimal approaches to follow (see references, p23). After this brief introduction, he went on to discuss some of the most important steps for healthcare organisations, and in particular healthcare estates teams, seeking to establish and implement an effective asset management strategy against today’s tough economic backdrop. It was firstly essential, he said, for organisations looking to develop such strategies to begin by re-evaluating their goals, objectives and “vision”, and equally to determine how their assets might best be re-aligned “in a way that allows them to move forward in the desired direction”. Additionally, high-level support, at both management and board level, and specific “change management” programmes, were essential ingredients when establishing a successful asset management strategy. Although major changes in approach to existing asset management practices could often be “challenging”, both for an organisation and for its staff, with “sufficient planning, persistence, and support”, the chances of success were greater, and the changes could often result in “unanticipated benefits”.
Importance of workplace design
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