The estates and facilities teams behind the smooth running of hospitals, health centres, and care homes up and down the country will be recognised in the hugely-popular Estates and Facilities Management class at this year’s Building Better Healthcare Awards.
The four awards up for grabs this year have been chosen to reflect the current marketplace.
The Award for Best Example of Efficiencies will be presented to an individual or team of health and social care estates and facilities managers or private contractors that can demonstrate service improvements and/or changes to working practices that are helping to reduce the cost of delivering services.
The judges will be looking for entries which measurably reduce costs, while at the same time enhancing or preserving services.
Entries can include, but are not restricted to, carbon reduction projects, estates rationalisation projects, privatisation or outsourcing of facilities services, projects which help towards a paperless NHS etc.
The second award is for Best Use of BIM.
Introduced for the first time last year, this category recognises the Government’s decision to make the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) compulsory on all centrally-procured building projects, including publicly-funded NHS and social care developments.
BIM is the process of designing a building collaboratively using a system of computer-generated models, rather than separate sets of drawings. It offers considerable cost and time savings and much-greater accuracy, avoiding errors as multiple teams input into a design over the course of its creation.
The award will showcase how this approach is being used within the healthcare sector to inform and enhance design projects.
There are also awards for Facilities Team of the Year; and Estates Team of the Year.
Best use of BIM 2016 winner – Building Design Partnership for the New Children’s Hospital Dublin
Both awards will recognise the efforts of teams working in NHS and private healthcare and social care facilities management.
The judges will be looking for entries from teams, both in-house and privately contracted, that can demonstrate they have consistently delivered excellent services to patients, staff and visitors and/or who have made an outstanding contribution to their trust's business and health objectives.
The Facilities award includes teams in charge of ‘soft services’ such as laundry, catering, cleaning, sterile services, linen, portering, patient transport services and security; while the Estates award is aimed at those in charge of refurbishment projects, development plans, estates rationalisation, and day-to-day building maintenance etc.
Jo Makosinski, editor of Building Better Healthcare and organiser of the awards, said: “The Estates and Facilities Management category is a very-important one as it recognises the efforts of EFM professionals in helping, not only to improve the physical estates from which health services are delivered, but also the positive impact this has on the enhancement of medical and care services. They may not be on the frontline healing patients, but estates and facilities professionals have a vital role to play.”
Commenting on the entry process, she added: “When completing the forms, it is vital you explain clearly how the entry meets all the bulletpoints set out in the judging criteria, and that additional information enables the judges to picture the project in its entirety.
“It is important that the entry is completed by a senior member of the team as they are in the best position to describe the benefits and the thinking behind the project. In addition, entries need to be clearly written and succinct; dealing only with the details and impact of the project and how it will demonstrate improvements on what is currently available. This should be supported by genuine comments from patients and clinicians.
“If these guidelines are followed then the judges will have sufficient information on which to make an informed decision. If any of this information is lacking, then it could mean projects not getting through to the final stages of judging.”
For more information on the awards, click here.