Calderdale and Huddersfield Solutions manage the estates, facilities, medical engineering and procurement functions for Calderdale and Huddersfield Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. They are an exemplar client, with a number of challenges facing the NHS and the Trust; including a 55 year old acute hospital; CHS have developed a 10-year strategy to address and go beyond the findings of the Construction 2025 report.
A clear vision: With transparent values to provide leadership to all their suppliers, to always ‘Put the patient first’ an emphatic response to the Francis report, which gives everyone a voice. Summarised as ‘Right Care, Right Time, Right Place’. All stakeholders and suppliers have realigned their values by adopting pillars of behaviour and expect all our employees and suppliers to follow.
People strategy: A clear people strategy, being a socially responsible and diverse organisation, growing and nurturing a workforce drawn from the community at all levels of qualification and background. They have instilled a culture of mutual respect. With a strong focus on learning and development for all staff, to enhance business performance and job satisfaction. Through mentoring and coaching support to navigate training and development opportunities. Encouraging creativity and a ‘can do’ attitude. Developed a clear apprenticeship strategy offering opportunities across all areas, whilst maximising the potential of the existing workforce who want to progress their careers.
Sustainability: Climate change remains at the top of the agenda, a plan to become carbon net zero has been implemented aligned to the UN sustainable development goals, robust processes, access to experts and the use of technologies that has is enabling the Trust to become carbon efficient.
Collaboration: To become the ‘provider of choice’, a strong supply chain is paramount, CHS have placed a real focus on building an integrated and unified team. Building long term relationships with shared behaviours and objectives and use frameworks to promote and facilitate continuous improvement. This includes a 16 year relationship with Interserve. They have developed a number of ways to engage, communicate and provide leadership to our suppliers at different levels. This includes setting up principle meetings, project boards, joint training, workshops, post occupancy evaluations, and sharing accommodation to improve communications and brainstorm solutions. This enables us to address project specific, stakeholder and wider estate issues.
Digital: They have invested and trained stakeholders to use a range of digital solutions across the full project team and lifecycle to enhance areas including document management and record keeping, planning and progress control, supply chain collaboration and engagement, build methodology, coordination, and communication. Including Fieldview, 4projects, M-Site, Sablono and Asta BIM systems. This has helped to get better feedback and streamline our processes by 27%. They are now able to communicate and share technical information more efficiently; using resources more productively.
Design: They say necessity is the mother of invention, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way CHS projects are conceived, designed, procured, and delivered. Including access routes and touchless control systems.
Key achievements
- Despite facing a number of financial and estate challenges for a number of years, CHS have successfully undertaken a bold transformation of the estate creating modern, efficient and exemplar facilities. Their journey with their supply chain demonstrates what can be achieved by working on a collaborative non-adversarial basis, developing a clear but challenging vision whilst encouraging innovation. Part of a small NHS trust they have achieved some big results. Their holistic approach and fully integrated team has successfully improved the patient experience and staff morale, KPI results highlight year on year improvements.
- A number of exemplar outcomes have successfully been delivered; including £18m of cost savings, over 300 projects, worth in excess of £60m, completed on time, within budget and dispute free, all KPI’s have been achieved. The Trust received an improved CQC rating of ‘Good’, with areas of outstanding practice identified. The patient experience and staff experiences have improved, with over 5,000 days delivered with zero accidents. Improved sustainability, including CO2 reduced by 10% and LED lighting installations/automatic controls are 50% more efficient; 99% of construction waste is recycled.
- Outstanding social value outcomes have been delivered, including a £130m injection within the local economy. The construction framework has generated 12 new jobs, 8 new apprenticeships, 2 undergraduate summer placements, 40 student visits/workshops and 754 apprentice weeks. 86% of subcontracts were placed locally, 90% of which were with SMEs, including subcontractors based within 5 miles from the site. This is a genuine partnership, supporting community groups and events including joint sponsorship and recognition at the ‘CHuFT’ and ‘Star’ Awards.
