FM CAREERS - TRAINING
MAY 2020 49
The UK Government has had
longstanding plans to cope
with a global pandemic – in
fact the Emergency Planning College
periodically runs exercises to look at
what the e ects would be, and the
arrangements needed to cope. When
the COVID-19 virus first erupted in
Wuhan, Hubei Province in December
2019, then took hold in Northern Italy
and was finally a pandemic by the
WHO on the 11 March 2020, decisive
action was required to meet the
threat.
In the United Kingdom, a team of
senior clinicians formulated a concept of
how the NHS could best cope with the
influx of patients when the pandemic
reached its height. It took just six weeks
from that first meeting to having a 4,000
bedded temporary hospital ready for
operation, thanks to some incredible
teamwork between the NHS, the military
and selected contractors all working
together in partnership.
EXCEL LONDON
The initial site identified was the
ExCeL exhibition centre in London’s
Docklands. The NHS and British
Armed Forces surveyed the site over
one weekend and the trusted key
contractor, ISS Healthcare, who were
asked to supply expertise and so
FM services including healthcare
cleaning, portering, non-clinical
waste management, pest control and
helpdesk. They were also tasked with
the supply of consumables, materials
management and the coordination
of waste and catering services. An ISS
Healthcare senior management team
headed up by Catherine Horne – who
had been responsible for much of
ISS Healthcare’s London operational
business – and supported by Shannon
Simpson, were swi ly able to deliver the
materials and services required for this
fast-track project. To resource such a
major undertaking needed many trained
specialist operatives and the planned
shutdown of other private sector FM
projects proved to be timely.
TRAINING
Through an ISS job retention scheme,
skilled operatives from the hotel
and transport sectors were rapidly
redeployed to the Nightingale Hospital
London – the nearby Sunborn Yacht
hotel, also managed by ISS, was used
both for accommodation and as a
training academy to educate the sta
in hospital-specific processes. This is
a concept ISS Healthcare had already
introduced into a number of their NHS
client’s Trusts (see https://www.fmj.
co.uk/healthy-results/) as a way of
providing realistic role-based training,
coaching and competency evaluation.
For the Nightingale Hospital London,
candidates received a half-day induction
course covering compliance, visitor
access, vehicle and fire safety, site do’s
and don’ts, accident reporting, useful
contacts and infection control. This was
then followed by a half-day practical
course covering such techniques as
mopping, use of cleaning equipment and
donning/ do ing PPE to go into high-risk
ward areas. To date, ISS has trained over
620 sta .
HSEQ Business Partner, John Kersey
explains: “ISS has a strong emphasis
on health and safety; it underpins all
our activities. Consequently, to support
the mobilisation of the ISS Nightingale
operation, HSEQ Manager Joel Crompton
was deployed to site and involved
from the start in setting up a HSEQ
management system drawing upon his
expert knowledge of healthcare issues.
The 2019 recipient of the International
Safety Award for Healthcare, Crompton
was an ideal candidate to fill this role.
As the operation ramped up, further
HSEQ resources were drawn in to
ensure compliance kept pace with the
breakneck pace and ever evolving nature
of the project. Good safety practice was
emphasised during the project including
starting morning briefing sessions with
a Safety Moment, communicating the
importance of social distancing and
engaging with service leads during the
risk assessment process.”
COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
Naturally in a collaborative project
various parties are involved; over 160
contractors including Armed Forces
personnel carried out a range of
mobilisation activities, from laying vinyl
flooring and installing piped-in medical
gas supplies. All these were coordinated
through the Mace Group as project
managers and CFES as site coordinators.
It is also the nature of private
contracting that companies such
as ISS must be agile and mobilise
their operations in a short timescale.
In normal circumstances there is a
period of familiarisation during the
bidding and tendering process – for
the Nightingale project this period was
collapsed due to the immediacy of
the requirement. Chris Ash, Managing
Director of ISS Healthcare, summed
this up saying: “The project shows
what can be achieved when all parties
work for a common goal and normal
procurement barriers are removed.
The interaction, communication and
collaborative working of all companies
under the banner of the NHS, along with
the military, it is a clear testament to the
British ‘can do’ attitude in times of crisis.
The London NHS Nightingale hospital
was o icially opened by HRH Prince
Charles (via video link) on 3 April where
he remarked that “Florence Nightingale,
the lady with the lamp, brought hope
and healing to thousands in their darkest
hour. In this dark time this place will be
a shining light." The hospital is currently
run under Barts Health NHS Trust.
Logistically, this is a huge site. Anyone
who has attended an exhibition or event
at the ExCeL London will appreciate how
vast it is – over 1km between the east
and west doors!
From an operational point of view, the
so FM teams are now available 24/7,
with individuals working a 12-hour 4
on - 4 o roster. The onsite management
team meets regularly to agree the
resourcing requirements and solutions,
but currently the signs are that perhaps
we will not need such a large facility, but
the point is, at the time of planning, we
simply didn’t know what to expect and it
was much better to have been prepared
and not required than facing a total lack
of resource.
The NHS Nightingale Hospital London
is up and running. Indeed, the first
patient has since been successfully
discharged, thanks to the extraordinary
commitment of so many people – the
whole FM industry can take pride in that.
NHS NIGHTINGALE When skilled operatives from ISS’s hotel and transport sectors were rapidly redeployed
to work at the Nightingale Hospital London a comprehensive training programme was in
place to ensure they were all ready for their new front-line roles
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