HEFMA’s Virtual Series Digitisation event last week (September 14) brought together some excellent speakers to address the challenging issue of digitising the built environment and FM services across the NHS.
Digitisation is identified as one of HEFMA’s core workstreams within the five-year strategy. It is a complex but crucial issue that E&F services have to address. IT systems, data and information are essential for effective communication and control of both buildings and services.
As Sarah Davidson, Associate Professor & UK BIM Alliance Implementation Lead at the University of Nottingham stressed, digital information is critical to the management of assets, and unreliable information generates risk, which no-one wants to do.
Sarah explained Building Information Modelling (BIM) and its benefits, defining it as a geometrical model with data sitting behind it.
Benefits in capital delivery & operational – going to have to find this
Claire Orchard, Digital & Information Manager for Strategic Estates at Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust presented an excellent digital roadmap developed for the Trust based on the results of many hours of conversations with multiple teams and disciplines to understand how people work and where the bottle-necks are.
Eddie Murphy, Founder of Ollio Consulting talked about ‘agile methodology’ as an outcomes-based process for finding the value of a great building through those who use it on a daily basis. The design, he explains, needs to start with the customer, the end user, and work backwards from there.
Dan Teare, mpro5’s UK Sales Manager was very clear that legacy systems across the NHS are part of the challenge. Technology, he said, should exist to make tasks easier, not harder. He was firm in his advice not to specify the technical capabilities from the outset – that is the job of the software providers who are the experts. The customer needs to identify the problem and then find a partner who is able to offer a solution.
A more detailed report of this event will appear in the November/December issue of HEFMA’s Pulse magazine. HEFMA members can also log-in to the website to access the full recording of the event here.
HEFMA would like to express our thanks to mpro5 from Crimson Tide for sponsoring this event.
There are two more events for 2021 in the VS series: the Workforce and Construction & Compliance. More information and book your place here.
