COVID-19 Clinic

FM SERVICES PROVIDER’S VIEW
CHRIS ASH,
MANAGING DIRECTOR, ISS HEALTHCARE

Standards of cleanliness and hygiene have always been at their highest in healthcare environments simply because of the need to protect the sick and vulnerable found in these establishments. The National Cleaning Standards within the NHS are currently under review but the 2010 version ‘Guidance on setting and measuring cleanliness outcomes in primary care medical and dental premises issued by the National Patient Safety Agency could still stand as a useful starting point for anyone wanting to mirror these levels of performance.

Facilities managers play a critical role in maintaining high standards, not just in healthcare but in any built environment. FM teams are essential in maintaining the efficiency and safety of everyone within the building.

Across our FM business, the company has developed a method called Touchpoints@ISS, which looks at an individual’s journey from the time they arrive to the time they leave. This method can be adopted for any building to ensure they can be kept operational, even during these testing times.

Using the Touchpoints@ISS principal, simple checklists are drawn up to highlight the events noted across the day, and effective measures put in place to help reduce the level of cross contamination. Public Health England has also provided some useful publications such as ‘Cleaning of non-healthcare settings ’. Consideration should be given to increasing cleaning frequency, particularly in areas of high footfall and all restrooms. Special attention should be paid to touchpoints such as door handles, telephones and keyboards.

We also provide guidelines for those who will be working from home such as keeping to your daily work routine. For employees used to being in an office environment, they may get ‘regular walks’ in the course of the day when walking to a meeting. Virtual meetings change this, so it’s important to remind people to get up and stretch; take a break from the screen and remain properly hydrated.

The FM can implement as many checklists and procedures they can think of, but the biggest contribution we can make at this time is ensuring that all our employees are well trained and equipped with the correct personal protective equipment (PPE). Regular briefings will also help ensure that everyone is fully aware of the importance of their roles. It is times like these where everyone suddenly realises just how vital the FM team is to the wellbeing of the entire business.

WORKPLACE COMPLIANCE EXPERT’S VIEW
GREG DAVIES,
DIRECTOR OF MARKET DEVELOPMENT, ASSURITY CONSULTING

Be it property and premises moves, agile working, health, safety and wellbeing, security, cleaning, HVAC, maintenance, logistics and risk, they are all everyday activities for FM. So, the challenges being thrown up by COVID-19 are, with one or two exceptions, not new to our industry, they’re just happening more quickly.

Equally the health and safety responsibilities placed upon employers, property owners and premises managers remain. These duties, hopefully in the short term, recognises the need to protect employees and other building users against exposure to COVID-19, as far as is reasonably practicable.

Social distancing and restrictions on non-essential movement does mean less people are using our offices, shops, schools, factories and leisure facilities. However, the unintended consequences of fully or partially unoccupied premises coupled with the reductions in staff and the specialist support available to manage them, create their own issues. For example, statutory inspections, air and water quality, security or cleaning, all need to be managed and maintained.

For those working remotely, some tasks may be the same, but the environment will have changed. So, advice and support on everything from setting up workstations (DSE), wellbeing (e.g. supervision, contact, workload), communication and even manual handling could be needed. If staff require infrequent but ‘essential’ access to your premises during ‘lockdown’ have the procedures, locations and services changed and therefore what information do these individuals now need? These are all questions for the FM.

If you don’t already have procedures in place, some of the issues you should be considering are:

• Where the management of your building systems and services have changed, review risk assessments and operation and adapt controls accordingly.
• Factor in appropriate control measures and government advice for reducing the spread of COVID-19 to all your schemes of management and controls.
• Provide information to staff working remotely on relevant issues, such as advice on DSE and manual handling, as well as information security.
• Check the availability of first aiders and fire wardens for premises that are still operating and adjust advice and information for them as required.
• Review your critical systems/those affected by statutory compliance. Draw up a list of which of these may be adversely impacted during ‘lockdown’ and prioritise actions, isolation and alternative provision as needed.
• Contact your specialist suppliers and contractors to identify where service provision may be adversely affected in the coming weeks and the possible impact of this.
• Check stocks/availability of, for example, treatment chemicals, fuels, components, filters and other consumables. Assess the quantities held against likely usage over the period of interruption and target activity around any shortfalls.
• Amend and adjust the provision of cleaning and security activities to reflect building use/occupation.
• Review the levels of training required for any enhanced or changed roles for staff and the means of delivering this.
• Agree any revisions needed for emergency or urgent works with your specialist contractors.

Our hospitals and healthcare premises are unfortunately seeing significant increase in the demands on the buildings, systems and services. The challenges here will be ones of logistics, utilisation and supply. While most hospitals plan for major incidents, including pandemics, few will have considered an event of this size or scale. Most activities will be reactive or at best planned in the short term, so that the problem solving role of FM will be critical.

Once the pandemic is over, and it will end, the work for FMs will be around re-mobilisation and a return to business as usual. So what planning needs to occur now in your organisation to facilitate this? COVID-19 is proving to be nasty, unwelcome, unpredictable and disruptive. But as the science, clinicians and epidemiologists will help us beat the disease, so the skillsets of the FM should position us to more broadly recover from it.