On the inside

MAINTENANCE TEAM

Amey’s role in delivering a compliant estate is to support the prison’s aim of encouraging inmates to go on and achieve meaningful employment on release. To help achieve this the FM team works closely with the prison authorities on a day-to-day basis to ensure facilities are available to support the delivery of training.

Explains Bailey: “My immediate team is made up of maintenance staff, cleaners and store operatives and we are supported by a range of contractors, both specialist and general. We work closely with the Governor, their team, and other functional heads of departments. During daily morning meetings, operational issues are raised, and everyone is given the opportunity to support how we rectify the situation and provide continuity to the prison.”

The contract is targeted on delivery outcomes, with the main focus being planned and reactive maintenance. Ensuring the site remains compliant and operational means it is essential that reactive maintenance is completed swiftly and with minimum impact on the operations of the establishment.

“Reactive jobs are wide ranging and cover everything from blocked toilets to significant repairs to the infrastructure. Ensuring the accommodation is fully available is a main priority for HMPPS so an enthusiastic workforce is essential to getting things back in service both safely and quickly. This means we have to make sure we hold a good stock level of essential equipment especially items which are subject to damage in cells.”

The Amey team and its suppliers are available 24/7 to support the establishment and occasionally during emergencies support is provided from other Amey maintained prisons to ensure they deliver the operational output required.

Adds Charlotte Sanders, Principal Business Improvement Manager at Amey: “We focus quite heavily on the out-of-use cells as there is quite a lot of visibility about these in each prison. It’s important that we provide the prison teams with resilience, so we need to ensure accommodation is available as quickly as possible to support the prisons mission.”

The CAFM system is used to log, distribute and report back on engineer tasks and despite the extensive digital restrictions within the prisons estate we have been focusing on how technology and continuous improvement is introduced and managed on the account.

An example of this is the creation of digital dashboards to report on site performance. These dashboards give insight into areas such as H&S and compliance as well as providing live updates on cell occupancy and task registers. The data the teams are gathering is essential to both Amey and the client in gaining insight and understanding of how the estate functions and its resilience in the face of diverse challenges.

Says Bailey: “The FM team will make real-time judgements on the level of priority for each reactive task based on their extensive understanding of the buildings, the client requirements, and the buildings occupants. Priority is always afforded to ‘life Critical’ systems and security.

“We have a well-tested system to monitor when services are due, and ensure we keep on top of compliance.”