After Stephen George + Partners’ (SGP’s) recent success on the latest NHS SBS Framework and with the maintenance of large public service estates making headlines in the national news, SGP’s Digital Director, James Blood, examines the importance of digital services to the future of the NHS estate. In the first of two articles, James looks specifically at the potential benefits to the NHS.

The NHS is one of the largest estates in the UK and is actively encouraging the application of digital services to not only improve the construction process on new builds but improve the efficiency in the refurbishment and ongoing operations of existing assets. In addition to three other Lot wins, SGP secured a place on Lot 11 – Ancillary Services, in the NHS Shared Business Services’ (NHS SBS) Healthcare Planning, Construction Consultancy and Ancillary Services (HPCCAS) framework agreement. By winning a place in Lot 11, we have been given the opportunity to help the NHS realise the value of digital systems in its day-today activities.

By embracing the BIM (Better Information Management) methodology as a start, the NHS can then start thinking about establishing concepts like Digital Twins and data driven Smart Assets. Thus better optimising its assets to deliver definite savings in terms of money and resources and support the NHS’ commitment to the best patient care possible. SGP able to help facilitate this by offering services that support the delivery of a wide range of objectives from big ticket projects like digital integration and developing Digital Twins, to delivering information management services such as how, when and what information to extract from suppliers. SGP can also offer consultancy services to help organisations understand their business needs and desired outcomes, analysing decision-making processes and identifying the associated information needed to support those decisions, along with the milestones for data collection and the systems required to capture, house, and extract it for later analysis.

The use of data modelling is having, and will continue to have, a big impact on the NHS’s drive for sustainability through the optimisation of both operations and maintenance. By collecting and analysing real-time data, potentially with the aid of AI and machine learning, the NHS estate can focus resources exactly where they are needed and avoid wasteful situations, such as heating or lighting being active when they’re not required. Increased efficiencies can also be achieved in the maintenance cycle by using data to become pro-active in the repair and servicing of equipment rather than reactive to individual problems. This avoids wasting time and resources for both the NHS Estate and its supply chain, facilitating the grouping of activities into the least number of actions and avoiding the need for repeated costly call-outs.

Alongside this, SGP are proud to announce that they are members of a unique partner ecosystem (Digital Twin Collective) who together can provide end to end solutions designed to cover Whole Asset Lifecycle via concepts like Smart Enterprise Asset Management (SEAM) thus reinforcing ours & our clients’ digital offer. This will be developed following the principles and agile approach proposed by the Academia-Industry Partnership (AiP). Led by academia, AiP will also assess the evidence generated in the project, ensuring independently verified outcomes and coordination according to other programmes of work overseen by AIP.

SGP’s successful appointment to the NHS SBS Framework will, we hope, offer us the opportunity to support the NHS in its drive to adopt and implement digital systems, to the benefit of the Estate, staff and patients alike.