client Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS FT

services Strategic Estates Advice

resourcesAssociate Director (Project Lead), Assistant Consultant x 2 (Technical Support, Map development)

completed ongoing from Oct 2017

value £50,884 (over 3 phases)

Archus were initially commissioned to support Phase 1 of the Trust’s Estate Strategy; to collate all the available information and provide a gap analysis so that the Trust could evaluate their position when progressing to develop a full five-year Estate Strategy.

Subsequently we were appointed to support the following two phases of the process, led from our Birmingham office, but incorporating support from colleagues in the wider Archus team.

Phase 1

Initially the new Head of Estates wanted to understand the full extent of the community estate as they had no documentation which pulled all of this information together. On this basis an Estates Terrier was produced which detailed all properties in use by the 3 Trusts and provided information, (where available), on location, tenure, leases/licences, occupancy costs, backlog maintenance, occupancy etc. A series of maps were created showing the location of properties by tenure, occupancy, utilisation etc.

In addition Archus reviewed and detailed all of the national and regional (cross boundary) strategic context. All 3 Heads of Estates and their Capital teams were interviewed and a workshop

was held which presented the information back to the teams and options to develop/merge the estate purely from an estates perspective were developed.

All of this provided BCHC with the ‘Where are we now?’ position.

Phase 2

It later transpired that TCT was not going to progress so the ‘Where are we now?’ position was updated to solely reflect the BCHC estate.

Phase 1 had identified the need for the Trust to undertake a 7 Facet Survey and, on the basis of Phase 1, the funding was made available and the Trust completed the surveys. The analysis of the ‘Where are we now?’ position was updated to reflect the more up to date information.

casestudy

Phase 3

The Trust then instructed the next phase which was to agree the Trust’s future vision and clinical strategy/assumptions.

We initially presented the ‘Where are we now?’ position developed in Phase 2 to the Clinical Directors. Interviews were then held individually with each of the five Clinical Directors to understand the future requirement of the Estate.

On the basis of this information and the knowledge the Trust wished to support the STP vision of a main hub within identified localities in the region and the MDT model of care it was possible to identify a number of opportunities to release or develop estate to minimise backlog and to provide safe, fit for purpose and efficient properties in the right location which would wrap around the patient.

It was recommended that there were certain quick wins that the Trust could progress on their own whilst also working with the wider health and social care economy on the sharing of properties within the region e.g. One Public Estate.

By doing the commission in three phases the lack of information originally available was highlighted and the Trust was able to finance 7 Facet Surveys.

The lack of an overall Clinical Strategy was overcome by meeting individually with each of the Clinical Directorates and then feeding this back as a whole to the Trust. As a result the Trust is now working towards a defined Clinical Strategy for the whole Trust.

The Trust received a comprehensive Estate Strategy which identified all properties within their estate, whether freehold, leasehold or those used on a sessional basis. The Estate Strategy also identified a number of schemes which it could complete in order to optimise their estate.

Where there were no obvious schemes in the particular localities identified by the STP the Estate Strategy recommended the sharing of information with other health and social care providers within the region with a view to an agreement on the best property in the area to develop as a hub.

It also provided information around the various funding options that are currently available.

The project was completed to budget and within the identified timescales.

Off the back of this piece of work we have now been asked to look at the various options to transform an individual freehold site into a non-clinical hub which would enable the Trust to centralise services (benefiting from savings through economies of scale) and release a number of leased properties (providing a recurrent annual saving).

Our knowledge of other clients across the two STPs (Birmingham & Solihull and Black Country) and their estates helped to inform the strategic development options as we were able to identify other properties/future developments within the region that the Trust could also make use of without having to invest further in their estate.

We now have a comprehensive Estate Strategy template which has been successfully replicated for a number of clients within the region. The work to understand the national and regional context has also provided useful for other commissions.

“I have reviewed the report and want to say that I have been impressed with all you have done with us and that the report is apt and exactly what we needed at this stage.”Mark Holloway, Director of Estates & Facilities, Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS FT