Case Study – RUM implementation at NHS Salford

 Paul Awati from the Awati Consultancy

NHS Salford is a Primary Care Trust with around 32,500 square metres in 23 buildings across the city.  The estate includes 400 clinical rooms and 300 office areas.

New requirements for space management.

Historically, accommodation has been managed locally, often being treated as a free good.  Space has been managed by building managers according to local procedures.  There was no data sharing and occupancy information was often incomplete.

So that the estate is properly developed and configured to meet service needs, NHS Salford along with other trusts is now required to manage space utilisation and allocation of space in a much more structured and accountable manner.  Salford’s estate strategy therefore demands formal space management with access to good quality information, including full details on available accommodation, occupancy data and costs.

The principal aims of this requirement are to:

• Provide data to inform strategic commissioning decisions

• Provide the necessary information to the Transforming Community Services (TCS) programme (at Salford, this involves the transfer of the provider services to the local acute trust)

• Enable efficiency gains through improved space utilisation resulting in greater use of existing space or cost reductions achieved by releasing space.

Space utilisation project

To achieve these objectives, it was clear that a new level of information was required.  A previous exercise was tried two years back with separate Excel spreadsheets for each building feeding into a “central” model.  This was not successful: it was too complex to operate, provided nothing back to building managers in return for maintaining the data and proved too inflexible for reporting purposes.

A new space utilisation project was commissioned by Mike Webster, Associate Director of Estates and Facilities at NHS Salford, with project design and management by Paul Awati of Awati Consultancy and Joan Campbell-Jones, Project Officer, NHS Salford leading the implementation.  The objectives agreed for the project were:

• Identify how accommodation is currently being used (by whom and how well)

• Quantify premises running costs and hence determine costs per user

Micad Property Management System

NHS Salford has been a long time user of Micad software which is used to store and manage key property information and it was a straightforward exercise to extend the scope to include occupancy and room specification data.Occupancy details and the vital stats of each room – function, number of workstations, beds, floor covering, etc - were collected in a trust wide survey.  This information was then uploaded to the Micad system together with total running costs for each building.

At this stage the Micad system will know about and can report on Dedicated Space – space which is allocated to one user or department for 100% of the time – for example a specialised use area such as X-Ray or an office or consulting room with a name on the door.  However, there is a significant amount of Sessional Space – multi use accommodation used on an hour by hour basis.

To get a true picture of space usage it is necessary to record usage by time.  Micad have recently developed the new Room Utilisation Module to fulfil this need.  (NHS Salford was a beta tester of the new software).  The Room Utilisation Module (RUM) has room booking functionality and reporting that combines data from sessional and dedicated space usage to show building occupancy by department with areas used, costs and, for sessional space, the percentage of unused space.

Achievements

The key point is that all information is now stored in one place and is accessible by anyone with the correct credentials.Operationally, the system is easier to use and a massive improvement over the scattered local diaries, whiteboards and isolated PC documents.  For building managers, there is an easy point and click screen to allocate space.  A similar screen shows who’s in / what’s on in the building for the day.At a touch of a button, estates staff can see available space for a given time and specification together with the cost of that space.

The system has already provided valuable information to the TCS programme and service charge templates for providers transferring away from the PCT are now being developed using Micad data. From a planning aspect, there is dedicated space – for example underused offices and consulting rooms – that can now be safely made sessional.  Using Micad RUM will guarantee a room will be reserved giving confidence to the previous room “owners” that their booked sessions will be honoured.  Free time in the accommodation that would have been previously blocked can now be released. A report due to be released, will present a bird’s eye view that will highlight gaps between sessional bookings which could potentially be closed up by retiming the sessions. Good progress has been made, benefits are being realised and the results emanating from this project are expected to play an increasing vital role in supporting NHS Salford’s information requirements and estate management.

Most trusts will, if not already, be thinking about embarking on similar projects. The cost and operational implications of making ill-informed decisions in the absence of good information are high. With reform underway the pressure to "slash and burn" is tempting but as this case study proves, good space information and the right tools to manage it are key in achieving a Trusts strategic property plans for the future. 

For more information contact Micad or Paul Awati paulawati@yahoo.com