Barnet Primary Care Trust
A Case Study in Cost Reduction
How 3i Studio is helping Barnet PCT lower their building occupancy costs
About Barnet Primary Care Trust
Barnet Primary Care Trust (PCT) in North London has a property portfolio that includes the flagship Edgware Community Hospital as well as 18 other buildings such as health centres, walk-in clinics and ancillary services buildings. The PCT operates Edgware Community Hospital on a shopping mall basis, services being delivered to the local population by a range of providers who “rent time and space” in the facility. Sharing space and facilities sets new bench marks for the quality of service the PCT provides to patients.
In the old Edgware hospital, consultants had their own offices and consulting rooms but when they were absent these rooms were empty and redundant. Other areas were similarly under-utilised. It was essential that the Trust optimised the use of its facilities and the new Community hospital with its innovative shared space approach has been key to this important process. It is now the subject of a Government White Paper, citing it as an example of best practice.
The challenge of calculating the true cost of shared space.
On this basis, the Trust ongoing objective is to fully understand the true per square metre cost of operating all it’s buildings. Analysis of all areas within the buildings such as patient areas, administration areas, reception areas, corridors, plant rooms and electrical switch cupboards, toilets and other common facilities like air conditioning need to be included in the equation. In addition, all costs applicable to the site need to be added into the building costs on a pro-rata basis. To arrive at this fi gure the FM Directorate has conducted surveys to gather accurate information. This information is now all stored in the ESTATEManager database. Without this accurate measurement of the real cost of a shared space, Barnet PCT would risk overcharging other Trusts or worse, sink into deficit through undercharging. Previously, the complexity nature of a PCT added to the challenge of achieving a true shared cost fi gure and was made more difficult because staff where working from time consuming paper based systems for collating the information that they used on a daily basis. The software is now an essential tool helping to keep track of this important Reference Cost information.
Strategic vision starts with accurate costing.
As well as being essential for Reference Costing, many of the PCT’s strategic objectives depend on staff being able to identify for themsleves the real cost of operating the buildings for which they are responsible. This process is supported by the regular production of strategic plans that identify future needs, highlight non essential facilities, ensure that we continue to meet the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with our internal and external clients and ensure that we meet or exceed the NHS ‘Estate Returns Information Collection’ (ERIC) national bench marks for delivering value – all requirements that the software can easily cope with.
3i Studio’s ESTATESuite at Barnet PCT
As well as ESTATEManager, the property department uses several other ESTATESuite modules. These include ESTATETerrier for property lease and legal matters and FIREManager for risk assesments and risk management. The overall advantage of the software lies in its ability to make all the data relevant to a single site, quickly and easily accessible through easy to use working screens.
As an example, the excellent way that the software stores and reports on the NHS EstateCode Property Appraisal data has proven to be invaluable. Assessments and appraisals have been completed for all six of the EstateCode facets. The system assesses and categorises all the elements and then calculates the cost of refurbishment using the NHS ‘Risk Adjusted’ methodology.
Key Advantages
ESTATEManager is able to store and manipulate all manner of estates information including spatial information, costs information, stock condition data, property valuations as well as HSE compliant data for asbestos. With this knowledge the Trust is able to bench mark its performance against national standards for the buildings it operates in a timely way and with little effort.
The FM Directorate staff at Barnet PCT now experience a wide range of advantages when compared to working with paper records.
These include:
- Ability to calculate space use costs
- Ability to draw information to and from their AutoCAD system.
- Integration of data from all property management activities into a single reference source
- Ease of operation
- Ability to design many management reports in-house
- Scalable system for future developments
The Future
In addition to these very useful functions, the Trust is developing ways to use the system to allow managers to ask deeper questions that will help drive the strategic direction of the department into the future. The system is able to indicate where investment should be targeted for example into refurbishment or new build; or whether a particular building is suitable for its functional use. An exciting next development will be to add the webMADESimple module. This makes digitised information available to all users on the PCT’s Intranet and can be managed and run entirely by administrative grade staff with no specialist skills other than word-processing ability. These users would include property managers in the individual health centres.
