Medical review

TUPE TRANSFER

As with most new contracts, the mobilisation included a TUPE element for an existing team of residential engineers employed by the previous service incumbent. The concern was that lockdown might threaten to pose some serious barriers to successful implementation.

In fact, says Wade this wasn’t the case: “Due to Artic’s rapid actions on all mobilisation tasks upon being awarded the contract, the TUPE discussions started almost immediately with the incumbent engineers and their previous company.

“We held behind the scenes meetings ourselves with the engineers during the process just to check that all was well and they all reported an enthusiastic and professional approach from the Artic HR team that instilled confidence for them joining and continuing [to work] on our site.”

Wade admits that of more concern was the existence of gaps in engineering skillsets and a lack of specific certifications which were pertinent to the new contract. The allocated Contract Manager Tom Broughton, himself an ex-engineer, brought this to the BMA team’s attention after his assessment of the TUPE team skillsets. Artic took the initiative here and created a H&S and trade skills matrix to ascertain where further training was needed. They were able to cover certain assets within the buildings using their mobile engineering teams while upskill training took place.

Says Wade: “In bringing this to our attention during mobilisation, Tom set in motion training programmes for the TUPE team which addressed the skillset and certification gaps and kept our estate fully covered and compliant throughout the entire mobilisation process, showing the great benefit to be had from using contract managers with strong engineering backgrounds.”

SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is hugely important to the BMA, which promotes a sustainable lifestyle for every client, supplier and employee, encouraging carbon balancing and water neutralising for any events. To help meet its sustainability ambitions, during the mobilisation stage Artic completed a detailed energy audit to show potential innovative measures which could lead to a reduction in the cost of PPM, a reduction in carbon footprint and an increase in energy efficiency. Each new protocol or schemes of work which brought benefit to the BMA in terms of energy expenditure were itemised.

Explains Pinder: “Some examples of this were lagging the pipework to minimise the loss of heat, updating the lighting to LED and adding PIR- based motion detectors. For a quick win we fine-tuned the BMS to assist in their carbon management plan by operating the plant at peak efficiency. We reviewed the timing schedules and adjusted set points and running times to ensure they were aligned.”

Live efficiency monitoring for major plant using actual inputs and outputs was also introduced. For example, with the chillers by measuring the current flowing into the system and the cooling output from the system, both the change in temperature of the water either side of the coils and the corresponding flow rates can be monitored. For boilers, the gas consumed and the heat output from the boiler are measured, which helps to create coefficient performance ratings for larger plant.

Says Pinder: “We have now started to introduce both business and condition-based maintenance which allows for major items of plant feeding into the BMS to be controlled as and when is required. In association with the BMA Estates team we explored the consequences of modifying maintenance regimes in terms of frequency of planned maintenance depending upon business consequences of plant failure.

“We have set up alerts that get sent to our CAFM system to trigger maintenance before failure occurs. It also enables us to postpone maintenance when it is not required. This was aligned with work on the building fabric to identify ‘leaky’ buildings and suggest methods to decrease energy loss through building fabric and throughways.”

Building control scenarios are subject to constant review so as the Artic team increases its understanding of the estate buildings and when the BMA returns to full occupancy, it will ensure to adhere to SFG30 protocols. This will also be the ideal opportunity to introduce further innovations in control settings and intervals and zoning to realise energy use savings.

Explains Wade: “We now include Carbon Reduction Initiatives as part of our annual reporting, as well as just the data gathering. This aids us in ensuring that we are progressing at the right pace in this area, in alignment with our greater Carbon Descent Plan.”

Examples include:

• 100 per cent Renewable electricity tariffs
• LED lighting upgrades as standard
• Promoting paperless/ e-first ways of working
• 4 x electrical car charging points installed at BMA House
• Cycle storage capacity doubled
• Looking to introduce a PHEV company fleet policy in 2022

Concludes Pinder: “As the full BMA estate begins to repopulate with COVID-19 restrictions being rolled back, we are preparing contingency plans to remobilise certain aspects of the service provision where building occupation may have a bearing on the successful realisation of the SLA’s. In this way, our due diligence will further cement the successful delivery of the maintenance required by the BMA estates team.”