Striving For Predictive Patient Care While Maintaining 9 Hospitals & 5000 Beds at Serco Health

Ryan Condon (Host): We chat with the Estates and Assets Director at Serco Health Greg talks about the challenges of providing 24 7 support throughout the COVID pandemic, the benefits of having a positive mindset when driving appreciation for both hard and soft FM teams and he gives us a glimpse into the promising technology that will greatly improve patient care in hospitals so it will be great to hear his thoughts on Facilities Management.

Lauren (Organiser): Thanks for joining us today, Greg. We really appreciate your time to talk to us today about facilities management. I’m Lauren, our podcast organiser. And as I mentioned previously, we find that FM teams are often underrated, which I’m sure you agree with. So hopefully with your podcast, we’re going to further highlight the importance of FM to our audience. We do these podcasts to get insights from experts in the FM field. And we learn a lot from your experience.

Greg Markham (Guest): Thank you and good morning.

Ryan Condon (Host): Perfect. Yeah. Thanks for joining us today, Greg. Pleasure to have you on the podcast. How we normally start these episodes is sort of origin story. So we just understand your professional journey. So if you could just touch on from your journey of apprentice at Yorkshire Water to a state and asset director at Serco Health and how you initially got into the asset and facilities management field.

Greg: Yeah, sure. So I did what would now be classes and modern apprenticeship when it wasn’t modern or fashionable. Did a year of A-levels, didn’t think university was for me, looked around and found one of two apprenticeships in Yorkshire water in the whole of the Yorkshire region. Fortunate to get that. Sick and tired of full-time education and they went and put me full-time into technical college for a year, but at least it was practical and I was getting paid.

Went through that multi-skilled apprenticeship in the water industry and it was a time of privatisation. So there were no compulsory redundancies, which meant that every time a roll came up for progression, it was one of the supernumeraries that got it. And just in my local paper, because we had a newspaper delivered every day, because that was the down of the day, there was an advert for a works officer at Bradford Hospitals just over the hill from Halifax. It was a bit of a pay cut because it was going salaried, but it was that first step on the next ladder. Unfortunately, my wife at the time was very supportive and said, yep, go for it. And that’s when I went into, well, it was called works office. Then became a status officer soon after. And that’s what we now know as facilities management, but nobody ever mentioned it as facilities management at the time. Best move ever. Really good team at Bradford. Four sites initially, but over time that rationalised to two.

And in the next 11, 12 years, I did pretty much everything on the maintenance side, minor works, capital schemes, we had a CAD system, so we were transferring drawings onto electronic format, but that was in the 1990s, so well ahead of its time. But I remember the first day walking in, there were two computers in the office. One had the works information management system, which you would now know as a CAFM, and the other had a BMS.

And we were a site that actually had a computerized BMS, totally Star Trek rocket science. They were quite forward thinking. Um, so I’ve got loads of exposure to all sorts of things. And as I tell people in, uh, the wider facilities management in healthcare, you come across every kind of asset, except rotary UPSs and cooling towers, because everything else, it’s like a small town that you’re maintaining with a, with a district general hospital. Um, the, the focus of assets, the concentration of them, the criticality of them. And yes, we are underrated in facility management, but I would say that, but we are, because without us, the way I try and portray, we care for the carers because we allow the carers to care, we provide the power, we provide the medical gases, we provide the heating, the cooling. And that’s all critical, but often the unseen piece, because we’re either in a duct, or in a plant room, or actually we can be within a foot of a patient because there’s a wall between us. And the services that go through our wall effectively are there. So yes, continued my academic journey because again, forward thinking, they allowed us to go through to HNC level and there was a part-time degree at Preston, University of Central Lancashire Building Services Engineering degree. And I was the third through there. And I think in the total around 10 or 12 of us went through that journey over the following decade.

Day a week, part-time day release over to Lancashire, learning all about building services engineering, but it gave us all an academic basis, which complimented the work learning that we were doing. Because the NHS at the time, as today, was struggling with some very old assets and not a lot of money to replace them, and how could you get the most out of an asset? And I guess it’s what you could even call asset management these days, but again, it wasn’t known as that. So yeah, very, very fertile time. Progressed through, I think because of the degree, we all had a loyalty to business. So when I graduated, I said to my director, I said, look, I’ll give you at least five years before I’m looking to move on. And I think everybody did the same. So it was almost that transaction and that agreement. It was a gentleman’s agreement. I think nowadays it’d probably be a golden handcuffs or a training agreement but it’s just something that we did. So through the year 2000 I was the lead officer for the Y2K for anyone that can remember that and again completely different. This theory of this clock that could suddenly stop ticking and everything would break turned out to be just another theoretical problem but we had to work through it methodically.

Ryan:

On that Greg, I was only nine at the time, but I remember that so clearly. You know, I’d say, well, it’s gonna happen on the 1st of January, 2020, you know, 2000. Ha ha.

Greg:

Well, my wife was a nurse at the time. We had two kids. And so people say, oh, how did you spend the millennium? Well, my wife was in A&E as an extra support because there was predicted surge of A&E calls. So that’s where she worked. And I was in at Bradford hospitals all night through because that’s where we had to be in case anything went wrong, the full team were in. And that’s the unseen side of FM. 24-7 service because hospitals don’t close or if they do, there’s a real problem.

So yeah, that was the millennium for all of us and the kids spent a nice time at grandma and granddad’s and probably got to stay up far later than they should do but they were looked after and cared for while we did the same for those under our care in the hospitals. Then in 2002 we were doing a public sector comparator for PFI and this PFI thing was coming. There were some schemes around and then I actually got head hunted for the first time which was a bit weird.

Ryan:

Thank you.

Greg:

Um, and I was invited to join a company called Bovis Lend Lease in my local hospital where my wife worked. And I remember saying to her, I said, Oh, I’ve got a job opportunity, less of a travel, less of a commute. And she’s adding two and two together. And this is odd because West York is quite a compact area. Um, she’s still in hospitals. Yeah. She’s go on. Then Bovis Lend Lease and her response was, you can’t, it’d be like sleeping with the enemy.

There was a complete misnomer about PFI. The NHS were very frustrated that they had to go to this PFI thing. Um, and yet you would be sleeping with the enemy because, well, if we put things on the wrong place on the wall, they’ll fine us. That was the kind of, um, myth that was being peddled. You had housekeepers who were part of the estate or the ward team.

but they outsourced to ISS for soft services. They were excluded from the lottery club because they weren’t an NHS employee anymore. Really, really sad time. But we got through it and actually, we started to work with the NHS and started to get them to understand actually we were there to provide them with the facilities in exactly the same way as an estate team would do. And by the way, if we don’t, there’s a massive contract that you can levy against us. And that was the start of the PFI journey.

Then got approached by a company called Carillion, say it quickly. Obviously it’s not got a great history now but as a business at the time it was brilliant and the health business was a really good cohort of people, some really good FM professionals. And that’s when facilities management started to appear at least on my radar because this private sector organisation had an FM division which had a health division, What’s this FM?

And that’s when we recognized that actually what we were doing in healthcare was facilities management. It might be hard FM, might be soft FM. Um, and joined the team in Swindon and relocated the family, um, on the basis that, well, an hour away is London, if it all goes wrong. Uh, so I can always get a job there. So we’re not marooned. Um, but yes, uprooted the whole lot and down to Swindon, not Sweden. Somebody misheard. You’re going to Sweden? Not quite. Although.

Ryan:

Hahaha!

Greg:

With modern transport, you probably have been quicker to get to them from Sweden than Sweden. And then set about the PFI journey down there. And there was a customer services director. You see, you would never get any NHS, but because we were an FM company, we had a customer services director. And at that time, currently we just acquired PME, so Plan Maintenance Engineering. And they were looking for a chief engineer. And he said, well, look, you’re doing really well.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Greg:

I think you’d be ideal at this. It’s a technical opportunity. Um, you can get rid of the profit and loss, which I enjoyed, but I was definitely more the technical side. Um, and I went for an interview. Um, the concern of the NMD was, Oh, I’m not so sure you’ll have seen that. It’s like we’ve got, cause we run all these big banks and data centres. You need to come and have a look. Went across and did a site tour and they showed me these two new generators, 500 KVA, biggest thing ever they’ve gone in. Got four 1.2 megawatt generators at my hospital so yeah it’s big but it’s not as big as it could be and actually yeah it’s not that and that was that misunderstanding about hospitals so I looked around like I said these are roto UPS cooling towers never seen those but they’re very basic mechanical and electrical systems and became chief engineer with PME still kept involved with healthcare because Carillion was still the master of all of that

Ryan:

Yeah.

Greg:

And there was some hope that PME could start doing more of the harder thing outsourcing on behalf of health, which we explored and didn’t quite work out. But then I got into the whole world of data centres. And that’s when you understand actually that money talks in many ways because the resilience of a data centre for a bank, it was massive. There was three times more assets than you needed because the consequences of it not being available.

It could affect the money markets. Unfortunately, the health service don’t have the same level of resilience in health care because it’s that unseen service at the back. So lots of paralleling, I think. Something not quite right in the world here, but here we go. I remember somebody once telling me that one of the data centres that we maintained for one of the very large banks, the gross domestic product of the UK was traded through it every 48 hours. And that’s just mind boggling numbers, but it’s just digital.

Ryan:

Yeah, wow.

Greg:

You don’t see it but I walked down there’s 14 2 megawatt generators down the side supporting this just in case there were three chillers, try as many chillers as you needed just in case absolutely amazing mind-boggling from an engineering perspective and then one of the banks had set up a new one and we actually got to mobilize that put all the engineering procedures in develop the carillon plan maintenance

Ryan:

Wow.

Greg:

Resilient system critical engineering management CEM put standard operating procedures in emergency operating procedures. We did training and drills with engineers the kind of thing I would love to have the headroom to do in healthcare But you can never get the facility available to you was in the banks. They wanted it to be used in exercise because they understood the risk of an unplanned outage And then from Carillion things started to turn a little odd

In the late 2000s, I started looking around in G4S, were available as a technical director, got back into healthcare. We had some defence, some education, and some general FM as well. So again, another broad introduction and this TFM thing, working with our soft services colleagues.

Ryan:

Did you feel a sense of like comfort jumping back into the healthcare part?

Greg:

To an extent, yeah, because I’ve kept in touch with healthcare because of the Institute. So the Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estate Management, I was involved on the exec committee, I was involved in some of the membership committees. So I’d always kept my hand in and we still had a touch point with healthcare and Carillion because of the Carillion health piece and whenever there’s a problem, call Greg, can you help us with this? We were a shared resource that way. But G4S has put me more back direct with healthcare.

I always say that I’ve got no profit and loss responsibility. I’m the technical guidance, I’m the company’s conscience. Work out what we should do, why we should do it, when we should do it. But the site team decide the who and the how, effectively. And then go and check to make sure they’re doing what we need to do. Because in hard FM I equate it to having your car serviced. Nobody really wants it, it’s that unnecessary evil. But you always do it just in case, but you’re never quite sure.

They’ve actually done anything, but you hope it doesn’t break down, but you still have a breakdown service just in case it does. And I remember one occasion, one of my sites, we had a chief executive’s tour every week, which was brilliant. Chief exec and a small entourage including service provider went round and we looked at a certain area, talked to the ward staff, are you getting the right service, is there anything we can do, is there any improvements? And the director of the estate came at me and at the end of it said, you know, I’m really disappointed. He said, damn.

I’ve counted 10 likes that were out on the corridors.

I thought ‘thank you that’s nice of you’ and my answer back was ‘well that’s really disappointing that people take people dozens of people have walked past that not wrote port that to help desk so but on the other hand I said we must have over a thousand I said so I think we’re at ninety nine point nine percent availability’. The chief executive went ‘do you know I love that response’ that’s exactly it but that think if you walk into a building the lightings or where it should be the heating says it is and the powers where you want it and there’s a light out, you might notice it. If it’s flickering, you absolutely will. It’s a very negative area, it’s a hard FM particularly. Everyone notices when it’s not working or the boiler broken down again. They might not understand the circumstances or, oh, it’s too cold in here and they haven’t used the local controls. So you have to go with an open mind and engage and talk with people. Not necessarily one of the strengths for an engineer. So you have to try and develop that in your teams, that empathy and that engagement. So yeah through the G4S then had some problems with the government as I’m sure everyone remembers with the Magic 2012 Olympics and some offender management issues that I think have only just gone through the court and decided not to go any further. So moved out of there and onto a company called EMCOR. Left healthcare altogether because they didn’t have any healthcare but again critical manufacturing, utilities, telecoms, back to the private sector with some of the insurance companies and the like. Very, very broad range of experience and I’d become president of the Institute of Healthcare Engineering at the time so I kept the healthcare link going and they were very kind to allow me to release from my duties to be that president even though we weren’t in healthcare and six very good years with EMCOR, very good years. That time came to a natural conclusion, moved on and the MD who recruited me into Plan Maintenance Engineering was being an interim at Serco Health for a new role which was effectively technical director or Estates and Assets Director as I’m called and he reached out for some support. He says oh you’re healthcare can you help with such and such? Yep such and such this. You don’t know anyone that’s interested in a job do you? Well I might be actually.

And then the planets aligned and I took the job at Serco. Landed on the 1st of November 2019. I think I met my colleagues twice. And then the pandemic hit and lockdown. Back into healthcare. Yeah. But from a personal perspective, all of those years of experience, all of those years of healthcare and allied sectors all came together.

Ryan:

Yeah, yeah, what a time to start, you know? Ha ha.

Greg:

And you actually felt that you’re making a difference, even though it wasn’t a physical difference on site. I don’t remember much of the first three or four months, but I’m told by my good lady wife, who was still in health care and still going into work as she had to. That most of my day started before eight and finished after eight and it was seven days a week. But then again, there was nothing else to do because we’re all locked in. But that was anything from supporting people with what they should do with ventilation and trying to persuade our infection control colleagues that negative ventilation wasn’t required, it was still positive but controlled in a different way, through to sourcing PPE and having interesting discussions with suppliers, oh but you’re not the government, you’re not the NHS, no but we’re buying on behalf of the NHS, we serve the NHS, we work with the NHS and having to have a conversation with a member of the Cabinet Office who then got the message down to the suppliers, if Serco ring you and it’s Serco Health, it might as well be me, so answer them.

All of those bizarre things at COVID screening, PPE, face fit tests, is FFP3 mask really suitable? Should we be using this? Where do we get the gowns from? But Serco were really, really supportive because it was an uncertain time for them. They were going to say, whatever you need, buy. And suddenly I was procuring £2 million worth of PPE, just in case, at hugely inflated prices.

Ryan:

Yeah, of course.

Greg:

But it was a case of whatever we need to do to keep our people serving to serve the healthcare, do it. And there was that dynamism. And I think also on the NHS. So governance kind of slid to one side because we couldn’t get around to me. As a board, we were all assigned one of our sites. Swindon is my nearest site because that’s where I lived and that was the hospital I’d served. So I was back to Swindon and remembering my time as a States manager there. Um, and also helping and supporting. We did some oxygen resilience upgrades; life hospital full of COVID patients, a load of oxygen going through and we’re putting extra oxygen supplies in, putting pipe working live, all safely but a lot of planning and a lot of commitment and a lot of knowledge from lots and lots of people all coming together at a time when the demand was just unprecedented but it was a case of this is almost a national emergency we’ll all pull together, ordering half a million pounds of material on a promise that they would follow as a purchase order, but we need to order it today to make sure we get it through. And suppliers going, that’s fine, we’ll work with you, we’ll sort it. And the order followed a week later. You’d never do that today. But because there was a pandemic, you were allowed that freedom. So all of the politics kind of slid to one side and we were all one. Even to the point where some of our sites were saying, look, get your Serco badge and we’ll get it reprinted with the NHS Logging John so you can access the same NHS benefits to the people that you’re working alongside.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Greg:

Sadly some of that’s fallen away and been forgotten about but massively challenging but also rewarding.

Ryan:

Yeah. That’s interesting you say that Greg. We spoke with David Jones, who’s director of states at University Southampton NHS Trust. And we were saying, you know, how did they cope with the pandemic down there, the first, second, third wave? And he said, we’re still dealing with it now, you know, is that the case, you know, of your role? Yeah.

Greg:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we’ve got hospitals with a hundred plus percent occupancy, which sounds bizarre because they can’t. I’d love to bunk bed them that we don’t, but you’ve got five beds in a four bed bay, but that’s now become the norm because of the pressures on the NHS, let alone the weightiness pressures. The industrial action from the medical side, that’s not helping, but to be honest, it was already there was that pressure.

Ryan:

Mm.

Greg:

We’ve still got COVID, we still have COVID patients in hospitals, not in the three or four figure volumes, but you’ve still got an underlying issue. It’s become endemic now, has COVID, in the same way flu was or is. So it could be flu, it could be COVID, but COVID is still prominent in people’s memories. And you can test for it because you can’t for flu. But yeah, it’s still causing us operational problems. We can’t get to do the maintenance because the NHS can’t make the areas available and then we’re having to work around as much as we can but also explain that it could break down and if it does this is the contingency. So it’s testing people again, people who are quite tired already because there’s been no let up and no break, particularly the medical staff and we’re there to support them to allow them to care for the frontline.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Greg:

Yeah, there’s, let’s just say there’s some tension in there.

Ryan:

Yeah, but I mean that’s quite mind-boggling to think that, you know, this is nearly four years ago now and yet people are still progressing with no break, as you mentioned.

Greg:

Yeah, there has been no break. I mean, we couldn’t take a break because we were needed. Then you couldn’t take a break because well, there’s nowhere to go. I mean, I remember the care hubs appearing from British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. That was amazing. And we were allowed to access it just the same, but just to see people coming in on furlough, coming in and caring for the carers, and you could see the decompression and relief on people’s faces.

Albeit the last thing image will always be the face mask imprint even after half an hour of a coffee, it was still there. And they were doing 12 hour shifts with that. They needed that time out. And in facilities management, the impact there, a chief head porter, been a porter longer than I’ve been in FM, must’ve been 40 plus years. And he was absolutely washed out. And I said to him, what’s wrong? And he says, do you know, he says, we’re used to moving bodies. He says, that’s what we do. We take them down to the mortuary we treat them respected but it’s the volume and the fact it’s just not stopping when’s it going to stop that’s a grown man that was near to tears and you kind of think yeah this is we’re making history but wow.

Ryan:

Yeah, the mental health side of that for these people is incredible.

Greg:

Absolutely. And there’s a renewed respect for those that have gone through other crises. So with poppy day coming up soon, whatever the politics, wherever your stance is on it, the people that have served the country in whatever form, you can now empathize to an extent quite what they went through because it was relentless. World War II was six years, World War I was five, six years, that relentless battle and we’ve had our World War of our generation, hopefully. It never turns into a true conflict. But I liken the pandemic to something like that. It’s that historical moment that we’ve made history. And my daughter’s a teacher and I said to her, just think, in the other five, 10 years time, this will be part of the curriculum, teaching kids about the pandemic. And you’ve lived through this and worked through this. Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a six month old myself, you know, and I say to my wife, we’ve got to tell him, you know, what happened, what everyone went through, how we can leave the house, you know, how to wear masks.

Yeah, yeah. And when was the last pandemic? Oh, the Spanish flu of 1918. About a hundred years. So this will all disappear from people’s memory. So we need to keep it alive. So they keep prepared for when the next one comes along because it will happen. Jonathan Van Tam was not wrong. Everyone looked at him and went, oh, it’d be at least a two or three years. Oh, sure. It’s only gonna be months. No, these things happen and we’ll have another one at some point in the next few decades. And everyone sat there thinking, yeah.

Ryan:

After the First World War, yeah.

Greg:

quite wise that guy.

Ryan:

Well, Greg, I mean, that’s an incredible professional journey you’ve been on, you know, and now obviously your role as the States and Assets Director at Serco Health. What are your main responsibilities there? How many facilities and teams are you responsible for?

Greg:

Yep, so we’ve got nine hospitals, all acute hospitals spread across England and Scotland. So there’s no geographical adjacencies. Over 5,000 beds we look after. All under PFI, various types of contracts. So some of the very first wave PFIs, very vague because it was the first one, right through to some of the more modern ones that are very, very onerous, very precise, very strict. Probably the balance went a little bit too far I would say but I’m not exactly independent but we have regional centres so we’ve got North of Norwich University Hospital it’s a regional centre for lots and lots of specialities there, lots of expansion going on so we’re upgrading facilities on behalf of NHS, putting cardiac labs in, more imaging going in, oxygen resilience, power resilience, because well, so it’s a new PFI, it’s 22 years old, and the growth in services in those 22 years has been exponential, and we’ve had to try and keep up with that and expand. So yeah, and again, no profit and loss responsibility. One of the growing areas is projects. So we’re doing a lot of, we call them minor works projects, but up to eight million pounds of new accommodation because it’s a PFI it’s easier to go through as a supplier Because you’ve got the lenders in there and the red line all that contractual stuff But we’re now providing a service to the NHS Which is having an impact on the local economy because we’re providing Jobs were providing facilities, but actually we’re resolving local health care inequalities as well. So that waiting list initiative It will come because the facilities are being built. How long?

Don’t know. Is it properly funded? Couldn’t comment. But there’s lots of capital money around for that investment. So lots of challenges there. Can you just squeeze this into that? And by the way, it needs to be done by the end of March. Oh, that’ll be the next March? Yeah, not the March after. So again, that usual, we need it now, we need it on time, we need it on budget. In fact, I’ll see if you can do it quicker, even better. But…

Greg:

Out of every challenge, there comes an opportunity. And that’s where on the FM side, we can demonstrate a benefit, because that’s the proactive side of FM. We’re keeping you safe, we’re keeping you compliant, we’re doing the maintenance that you never really like us to do, but actually we’re now providing you new facilities. And that ability to engage with a medical professional and say, well, look, what do you want out of this facility? Let’s help you translate what you want into a design. Make sure the clinical adjacencies are right, make sure it flows right.

It’s not always easy because I can understand drawing very quickly because that’s just how my work brand is wired. You show a drawing to a clinician and they’re kind of what does that mean so we’re trying to use more 3D fly-throughs and say well this is a walk-through is this where you’d like that office is that way you’d like that counter is that where the treatment room should go. From a portrait perspective we think the floor should go this way because it seems to make logic does that work for you from a clinical perspective?

And as always with clinicians, you get two clinicians, you get three opinions. So it’s getting that consensus and influencing the design, but also then using the guidance because there’s health technical memoranda, health building notes and the like. So you have to follow wherever you can. But a clinician may not always understand, well, why can’t you just do that? No, no, it needs to have this. It needs to have that. So that’s a positive challenge because you can see the benefit and the impact it’s having on the health care.

Ryan:

Yeah, sure. And you mentioned about the upgrading, you know, putting new facilities in. So in the past 10 to 15 years, there’s obviously been the big jump in the way technology is now used for asset and facilities management. You know, you can be using RFID tags, temperature centres, room booking apps. What examples of technology have you found to be most successful in your area? And how eventually do you think that will help improve the healthcare environments and patient care?

Greg:

I think we’re still exploring it because with PFI comes other hurdles. Because remember the asset is the bank so you have to prove to them that what you’re going to do isn’t going to deteriorate their asset. But the use is the NHS as a tenant and then we’re a service provider so you sometimes got to corral them. The decarbonisation agenda is clear and with that comes technological opportunities. But I think we’re only just even as FM we’re only just starting to understand what it could be.

Again, I’ll go back to cars. 10 years ago, every car had a service interval of 9,000 miles or 12 months. Now the vehicle tells you when it’s due. And the first thing that when it goes into the workshop, the computer gets plugged in so the technician knows what needs to be done to it because it’s kept its own log. We aren’t quite there yet in facilities, but I can see that happening over the next four, five, six years will get more intelligent assets. But because of the life cycle of the assets.

We’ll have to build intelligence in and that’s where IOT comes in. Very quick to deploy. Some can be battery powered with a five to 10 year life these days. You just need a Wi-Fi network and it’ll hook up to that. Because first off, mind the data that you’ve got, because there’s lots of data in your CAFM system to see how your assets are performing, then use IOT technology to answer the questions that data doesn’t give you or to answer the questions that data raises.

There’s a proof of delivery, which is a benefit in PFI as well, because everyone has an opinion as to how the temperature is, but an IoT sensor will tell you exactly what it is and what it has been and where it’s through. That early warning sign so you can schedule maintenance rather than it being reactive once it’s broken down. Bit like a car now, you get an amber light, please book into a workshop. I think that technology will come through. The challenge will be accepting that technology and what it can do from a condition-based maintenance. So it’ll condition monitor and then you can influence your condition-based maintenance cycle. But then it’s the upskilling of the FM engineers to be able to deal with that technology. I know AI is coming and there’s these wonderful predictions that nobody will have a job in 10 years because of AI. Now there’ll still be engineers that are needed to fix the AI and robots as good as they are

Ryan:

Yeah.

Greg:

I’d love to see a robot climb around one of our plant rooms and get to the asset. It just doesn’t happen. Um, so there’ll always be engineers, but I suspect there’ll be fewer engineers, but higher qualified engineers. I think the virtual help desks, the help desks will be there to take calls, but they’ll also be there to triage from a technical perspective. So when a call comes in, a technical person will look at all of the data and try and do some root cause analysis before you even send an engineer.

It’s likely to be this or that. Please take kit A or B and then you’ve got your first time fix. And that analysis will then come back and then you’ll review it. The kind of analysis we don’t have time to do or headspace to do, but computers can. That problem cause remedy and then you can start to predict what it’s likely to do. Then you start to predict when that failure window might open. It’s a bit like Formula 1, if you’re into Formula 1, the pit window is now open.

Well, actually, the failure window is now open. Watch this asset a little more closely because statistically, it’s likely to fail in the next three months. And these are the likely failure modes. If it’s a critical asset, go and replace it now or upgrade it or refurbish it now before it breaks. If it’s a non-critical asset, have the spares available so when it does break down, the interruption is hours, not days. That intelligence will come and that learning. It will be lovely.

Ryan:

Having that predictive mindset, you know that, yeah.

Greg:

Yeah. And it would be lovely to have a common platform for all FM to do that. But I don’t think that will happen. We’re already, we’re already seeing some suppliers coming through with a very closed mindset to their data, whereas actually we should be more open about this.

Ryan:

Yeah, sure.

Ryan:

Yeah, you mentioned there one of the challenges is having the skilled technicians and the engineers as well. But could one huge challenge be making sure the infrastructure is in place for having a secure network? You know, having that Wi-Fi is so incredibly important to filling in the data set that you need.

Greg:

Oh absolutely.

Greg:

Yes, and if, because the good old hackers are there, if they could infiltrate that network, you could soon distort the readings and bring critical assets down because you can distort the reading and say, I’m fine when actually it’s not. So there has to be security around that. And so we’re in the defence arena, we’re in the custodial sector, we’re in healthcare, we’re in government. So yeah, that whole risk is very clear and apparent for us.

And it creates more hurdles on an IT side, but for good reasons. Um, but that’s something we will have to be absolutely cognizant and aware of. Um, so yeah, things can be done remotely. I’m looking forward to the time when, uh, there’s all the HoloLens and the virtual glasses, but to be able to have a 3d walkthrough, but be able to walk through as the engineers walking through, but be able to desk somewhere else, but with all of that technical noise, I mean that, like I say, our nine hospital sites, we’ve got Glasgow, Dumfries, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Stoke, Dartford, Swindon. Not exactly close together, but the range of skills and abilities that you’ve got, it’s difficult to get all of that in a single team on a single site, but across all other sites you can get that capability. So if you could be location agnostic, I’ve got a problem with a chiller at Norfolk and Norwich, the chiller engineer might be in Swindon.

But he can see what the engineer can see on the ground and can access all of the digital information and look at all of that data to say, well, the likely cause is going to be 75% it’s going to be the compressor, 20% it’s going to be the relief valve, 5% it could be this. This is what we’re going to work. And I’m here to support you. And you’re going to be my eyes, ears, and hands. And I’m going to direct you to what to do and where. That I can see being a game changer.

Ryan:

Yeah. How far away do you think we are from that?

Greg:

I think the technology is here now, but we don’t have the digitization. So there’s BIM models coming for new buildings. Brilliant. Not as good as they could be in my view, and there’s some work to do there. But that’s that cycle of you don’t know what you want until you’ve got it, and then you can inform the next BIM model as an FM. But I think the capabilities there now, the point cloud surveys are now becoming cheaper, so you can do a retrospective BIM model.

But when you have to make that investment and you’re competing against other business priorities, it kind of gets sidelined. So we’ve still got to prove that concept and that, that whole life cost of the building, but people still look at me like I’ve grown an extra head when I said, well, 90% of that building’s cost is operating it, not designing or building it. He’s seen its operations and they go, really? No, no, you’re saying that because no, honest, all of the studies are done and actually the more.

Technically, complex building, the higher the proportion of its operation. If we could get a BIM model, which I see as a effectively a living operating and maintenance manual that has all of the critical assets in there, all of the key data, all of the operating and maintenance information digitally. So you can literally walk down, look at an asset and just do something around here. And it all pops up in a screen available to you. That would just be amazing. The technology capabilities there.

We just haven’t caught up with that digital information and it’s gonna take decades, it really is. But yes, that I can see, and that’s when AI can start to come in more. You can then start to augment that with engineering capability, but it could be anywhere. You could have follow the sun engineering support. So actually the unsocialized thing disappears because.

Well, it might be midnight in the UK, but it’s midday in Australia and there’s an engineer there who can access the same information. And yes, it’s a disruptor to the person who’s going to the asset, but all that technical support is available to them in that first time fix or better still that proactive fix before. The output is even deteriorated to the point where people notice that’s that holistic almost self healing building. I don’t think we’ll ever get a building to heal itself.

Greg:

I don’t see that. That’s definitely sci-fi. But I can see predictive models showing when it’s about to break and do that just in time maintenance and rectification.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Lauren:

That’s really interesting. Do you think, we’ve spoken a bit more about, you know, connected technologies and CAFM systems. Do you think spreadsheets still have a place?

Greg:

Oh no! No! You know if Excel crashed tomorrow the world would just halt. The number of people that said I’ve got a spreadsheet for that and then you see some of the spreadsheets with all the macros and this and that I have no idea how it all works but all I know is if one of those links breaks how do you know? Because you’ve got 55 sheets deep that are almost breaking the boundaries of the field but the person that designed it knows exactly where it is but that’s a single point of failure. We’re trying now to move across to Power BI reporting and I’m hoping I will never kill Excel spreadsheets totally but I’m hoping we will reduce the use of Excel spreadsheets significantly. It’s a necessary evil because of the way that software works that you have to have an output that you can then manipulate and the Excel spreadsheet is the way but I would love to see them reduce significantly over time. It was just, oh, we’ve got a spreadsheet for that. We’ve got a spreadsheet. Here’s one I prepared earlier. I’m sure we can change the macros in this one. It’ll do what you want to do. I’m thinking you’re talking a different language, but you’re the XL Ninja off you go, but I’m just worried that you’re the only person that knows what’s gone on with that spreadsheet.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Lauren:

Yeah, dangerous things possibly.

Greg:

Yeah, because people get to believe what it says because they trust it, but actually there might be an error somewhere in one of those calculations that’s giving you a wrong result, but you don’t know it. When I did my degree, some of the design modelling software was coming through Hevacomp. And one of the lecturers said to us, you can use Hevacomp all you want, no problem. But I want to see a manual check calculation for one calculation of each system that you’re building. For all good, why there’s a computer there, but the computer might have got it wrong or you might have mis kept something. Do a manual check to prove. And I still say that today and I still encourage people that I work with today. Don’t just trust it. Do at least a rough order calculation where you think the results should be before you accept what comes out. And the spreadsheet is just a computer program that somebody may have mis programmed.

Lauren:

That’s very true. And yeah, the data and what you put into it is the most important.

Greg:

It is. Yeah. Put the right data in the right form and it might come out in the right answer. Who knows.

Lauren:

Also, as we touched on earlier, an important aspect of this podcast is to drive appreciation for FM teams. We feel it’s important to recognise how hard people within the NHS work for everyone, especially for people like yourself who’ve managed hospitals or managed multiple facilities with about 5,000 beds as we mentioned earlier, cancer centres and children’s hospitals. You talked earlier about engagement and empathy.

What value do you think FM teams bring to such critical facilities which might otherwise go unnoticed?

Greg:

Um, I think the biggest step change has been the pandemic because people suddenly realized that only the essential people are in action as a team from FM in as well. Yeah. I can’t work from home and change your oxygen system. I can’t work from home and maintain your handling units. So that appreciation was there, but also that flip understanding that engineering and FM teams understood how critical it was. Cause there’s two challenges in hard FM, it’s technical and it’s behind closed doors people don’t really appreciate it, but it happens. In soft FM it’s upfront and happening but people equate it to things they can do at home. So, the cleaners which is cleaning, catering which is cooking food but actually it’s that dietary risk and is that care of a patient and that healing through food. The pandemic absolutely raised the profile of cleaners because they were doing the touch point cleans that kept everybody safer. And it was like oh yeah but actually.

The COVID virus is a very weak virus, a very fragile virus. There’s a heck of a lot more viruses that are around that we control every day through the cleaning teams. The portering teams, they’re the ones that have the best touch point with most patients. If you’re a patient and you’re in this foreign space and you’re under pressure and you’re not well, are you really gonna talk to a busy medical staff? No, but you might engage with the porter because it might be a jovial chat about football or whatever’s going on.

but actually, you can make that link with people. The housekeeping team who serves the food, they’ve probably got more quality engagement with the patient than any clinician because the nursing staff are busy and the doctor just tells them in some strange language, what’s wrong with them? And they nod along with, oh, yes, that’s fine, thank you. It’s after that, that one-to-one contact happens. In the engineering fraternity, we’re very rarely on a ward, you know, piece, but we’re often in the grounds.

So, we’re looking after the patient’s relatives who are lost. Oh, oh, my father’s been brought in. Where’s Ward’s son, so where will he be? Don’t worry, we’ll take you along. We’ll get you to reception. We’ll find out where he is, and we’ll help you from there. It’s that additional care piece. And what I would encourage anybody who’s interested in facilities management, open your eyes to healthcare, because I think 10% of the NHS workforce, either direct or indirect, is in estates and facilities.

That’s a lot of people. And if frontline care really isn’t for you, you don’t want to go into medical areas or you don’t want to be a nurse or you don’t want to go into the pharmacy areas, but you’d like to make a difference in your local community, go into FM because it’s the FM system that helps the hospital run. I keep, and it’s a generational thing. Anyone that remembers a series called MASH, it was a medical comedy drama set in the 60s in the Vietnam War and it was a field hospital that was just tents. Well, you wouldn’t even have that without facilities management because the hospital building wouldn’t be working. Where would you treat the patients without the cleaners, the porters, the caterers, the hard-to-fem people? That’s the kind of difference we can make. And there’s a massive sense of pride in all of our teams that they work at the local hospital and this is where my family get treat, and this is where my friends get treat, this is where my children were born, this is who looked after my mum when she had cancer.

And there’s that collective spirit that you’re all trying to do what you can for the frontline. And sometimes that gets lost. And that’s the appeal to anybody looking at FM as a career. Don’t overlook healthcare FM. You can make a difference to people’s lives and the community and your own family’s lives potentially by being there to support the carers that are doing the frontline care.

Ryan:

It’s incredibly bittersweet that, for example, cleaning teams are now thoroughly appreciated because we’ve had a pandemic, you know, and it’s taken some sort of life-threatening movement for us to realise, wow, you know, this is what the cleaning team is doing.

Lauren:

Yeah, it does.

Greg:

But that’s happened so many times. I mean, fire, fire’s now top of the priority because of the horrible things that happened at Grenfell because we’ve all got complacent that we had these regulations that we find that could never happen and it has. So, there’s a renewed focus on fire. It should never get to that, but it did. Water hygiene, Legionella outbreak in a leisure centre in Barrow. Suddenly water hygiene came, all the regulations were rewritten. It took two, three, four years.

but now there’s a focus on water hygiene because everybody remembers Barrow. But even that’s starting to fade now. God forbid there’s another incident like that, but it’s that starts to raise the profile, but it’s quite a negative one. It would be nice to be on the front foot and positive. The number of times I’ve gone to a new hospital, and we don’t, oh, hard FM team, oh, just rubbish. They’re not doing this; they’re not doing that. We just can’t get anything out.

And my question back is, when did the power loss go off uncontrolled? When was the last incident with the patient? Not so actually as a base job, they’re doing okay. Cause they’re keeping lots of people alive. Cause in hard FM, there’s loads of people with loads of ways we can affect people negatively, absolutely myriad of words. The fact that we’re not tells me whilst they might not be engaging with you on a personal level, whilst they might not be giving you the answers that you want, whilst they might not be commercially aware actually.

They’re doing a good engineering job underneath it. I’ve always said that the risk profile in FM, five, well 15% lies with soft FM, five with the cleaners and the porters and security because they can affect an individual person with their actions. 10% with catering because yes, they have caused fatalities, but they’ve only got one weapon and that’s food poisoning. You look into estates.

The electrical infrastructure is there or the loss of it. The hot water is there, the heating is there. We can put the wrong gas in, the medical gases. Fire is controlled or suppressed by what we do or don’t do. You look at all of the ways in which we can negatively affect the wellbeing of anybody, including the staff as well as the vulnerable patients. It’s almost endless, but that gets overlooked. But we have that negative but more often than not the positive effect because we keep it compliant, we keep it working, we keep it running. And that’s why I say it’s a negative industry because it’s only when it fails that the focus comes on us. And quite often we get celebrated because we’ve recovered the situation. That always sticks in my crawl a little bit because it shouldn’t have gone wrong in the first place. We’re there to prevent it going wrong. The fact we had a disaster recovery and we put it into action, and it worked, that’s brilliant, celebrate that.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Greg:

But underlying, I’m thinking we failed because it’s gone wrong. It shouldn’t get to that. Um, so yeah, it’s, um, it’s interesting, but it’s that holding that mirror up. If I didn’t do what I did today, what would be the consequences? And from, from my perspective, I’m that distant from the frontline. Somebody might not get a report. Somebody might not get an order approved. Somebody might not get an explanation, but if you’ve got the tooling and then you haven’t done your job that day.

Ryan:

Fascinating mindset, fascinating.

Greg:

The following day that item could break down that could impact a person negatively. So, you’ve got to think in that mindset that if I hadn’t done my job what could the consequences be not I’ve done my job and nobody’s grateful.

So yeah, it is a bit negative but then celebrate when we do get it right and then celebrate the new projects that we can deliver and facilitate yes, we’ve got a new 36 bed ward. We did it in nine months and look it’s connected and yeah, they cut the ribbon and everybody’s in there and it’s nice It’s warm. It’s toasty. It’s what it should be. That’s the tangible benefit of hard FM with much of what we do. Yeah, It’s the new car delivery syndrome and you’re going for a new car and you what covers come off it and there’s some technician around the back that’s prepared all of that and made sure it’s fit for purpose and checked it, the fact that at a 12 month time you’ll go and get it serviced to maintain the same thing, you don’t get the same joy or feeling out of that, there isn’t the big unveil or the reveal, it might have been washed and cleaned and that’s the biggest bonus for going for maintenance, and yet really it’s keeping you safe because it’s keeping it legal, that’s how the facilities are in my book.

Lauren:

Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it across for real life for people. I think everyone feels that pain of taking their car into a service. I know I particularly do. But to finish up, you know, we like to lean on your experience and give our listeners advice for both managers and also professionals just starting out in the field. So, starting with managers, could you give some sort of insight into how you find it best to manage large teams across multiple sites?

Greg:

Yeah, so I work on the basis I’m a servant leader. So, in the hierarchy, I might be top of the tree, but the reality is that the top of the tree comes the responsibility, because what I should do is make it easier for the next line to do their job. So, it’s not that they should be serving me, I should be serving them and making their life easier. Getting rid of some of the bureaucracy, automating some of the processes, improving the reporting to give them insight.

And then trust them that they do that. And if they do that for the next level down and to the next level down, what it means that people at the frontline can actually get it in my world, more tool time, so they can get hands on and fixing things or maintaining things rather than having to fill another piece of paper in to go and get another piece out of stores to find it’s not in stock because we haven’t got the ordering system right. So, then it’d be delayed. So, it’s about effective work.

And in big companies, big organizations, there’s always bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy should always try and be slim lines, the absolute minute to make sure the frontline can do their job. And in outsourced FM, it’s even easier because they’re the ones that earn the money. If they weren’t doing their job, we wouldn’t get paid. So, everything after that is effectively a waste of resource because that management time. So, let’s minimize that waste because it’s a necessary evil. We need that management. We need to organize things. But keep in mind, it’s not what makes your life easier. What makes your team’s life easier. And if you go into that mindset.

It doesn’t always work, but I’ve found you get the most out of people and you set them up to succeed and you can actually see people flourish. It’s very easy to pick out the faults in somebody, but it’s much better to pick out their strengths and then understand where they’ve got areas for development, not weaknesses, areas for development and see if you can develop them. And if it doesn’t work, that’s fine. So, play to the strengths, but compliment it with another member of the team. But it’s the team that work together.

That would be my advice coming into anyone in management. And also go onto the frontline, spend the day working alongside them and understand the reality of the frontline. It opens your eyes massively.

Lauren:

Really interesting and for people potentially opening their eyes to coming to FM in healthcare, what advice would you give to people just starting out in their in their career in FM?

Greg:

First step is to carry an FM, go with a very open mind. Wherever you get the chance, go and work and shadow all of the other services. So, if you’re in catering, go work with the domestics, go work with the porters, go work at the post room, go work with the hard FM teams. Be inquisitive, be nosy, be a pest, ask why, ask what. The number of times I’ve taken people around the hospital, and we don’t go into the clinical areas.

Because of COVID we couldn’t anyway, but I take him in the plant rooms. Yes, well 15% of these hospitals have a plant room and only about 2% of people ever get to see one. Would you like to come have a look and it blows the mind? And it also takes from that myth away but catering go behind the scenes in catering. The meals don’t just appear at the front. There’s a whole myriad behind it might be a pick-and-pack because it’s cook chill It might be a full production area.

And then don’t forget when they’ve done all of that, it’s all gonna get processed behind. And some of the dishwashers are amazing. It’s like a production line. But go and see it and find out about it and understand how it works. Because it might be that you’ve got a decision to make that may affect them and you’ve suddenly got an insight as to what the consequences could be or who it is you need to speak to that might have that unintended consequence about it. So go and be nosy, go and be an inquisitive. Go satisfy your mind and go ask. And there’s no, well, there is such thing as the daft question, because the daft question is the one you don’t ask. Don’t ever be frightened to ask a question of any form. And if somebody belittles you as a result, pull them up about it, because I always will. If you’ve got a question, ask it, because the chances are other people in that same audience will be wanting to ask the same question. If you don’t ask it, you don’t find out.

And hopefully you’ve got somebody who knows the answer. Or he’d only say, I don’t know, but I’ll come back to you. But yeah, there’s such a world of opportunity in FM. A massive world of it.

Ryan:

Hahaha

Ryan:

Yeah, oh that’s fantastic Greg, yeah that is really fantastic. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant, well that’s it from us Greg on our side, you know it’s been really insightful to chat with you today, you know understand ins and outs of your past experiences, your role at Serco and what it really takes to improve that healthcare environment and the patient care and also it’s really interesting to see what’s coming, what’s looking forward, how technology is really going to involve the facilities management, you know sector.

So yeah, thanks again Greg. We’ll be back with some more fantastic guests again. Yeah, bye for now.

Greg:

Thank you.