Ian Stuchbury Deputy Estates Manager

What we do

The Estates Department is responsible for the maintenance of buildings and facilities within the Trust. Not only do they deal with all repair work, they also carry out any new installations.

Estates organisation

Following a recent consultation process, there has been a change to the way the Estates Department will be responding to Smartline and new work requests.  Instead of trades working in isolation (i.e., electricians, mechanical fitters and builders) two teams have been created within the department – the Maintenance Team and the Response Team.  Each team is made up of a combination of trades, enabling the staff to multi-task, become more efficient, and ensure the completion of jobs.

Maintenance Team

The Maintenance Team is responsible for carrying out regular planned preventative maintenance (the cleaning of filters for extract and ventilation systems) and new installation (the fitting of additional electric sockets, new shelves and cupboards). 

Response Team

The Response Team’s primary objective is to reduce the number of calls to Smartline by pro-actively seeking out work and responding more effectively to the routine customer calls received.  The hospital will be divided into zones, each of which will be visited by the Response Team twice a year to carry out as many Smartline tasks as possible within the time and operational constraints of the area. Smartline requests will still be actioned as normal outside of these visits. Advance notice will be given of the team’s arrival to each area so that the person in charge can start formulating a list of all the repair work that needs doing.

There will be set visits and times for each zone, details of which are listed below.

How to use Smartline:

If you need to report a fault or require any new work doing, call Smartline on 5555. The operator will require the following information from you:

1. Your departments Smartline ID number.  Each department should have an instruction card on how to use Smartline, on the top of which is the Smartline ID number.  Do not call Smartline without this number – a job cannot be raised without it.

2. Your name

3. Your job title

4. Your telephone number

5. What priority you consider the work to be:

• Emergency - requires attention as soon as possible, i.e. life threatening (power loss, flooding, gas leak)

• 24 hours - impacts on the smooth working of the department

• 3 working days - does not cause major disruption of the department

• 7 working days - needs attention, but is not urgent (installation of shelves, drilling of holes for computer cables)

6. A time the work can be carried out, either ‘anytime’ or a specified time/date

7. Name of the item in need of repair

8. Nature of the problem

9. Any other details that will assist in making an efficient repair

10. The precise location of the work, i.e. room number (found on the door)

Once the operator has these details you will be given a job number to refer back to if necessary.  Please keep a record of this number.

Emergency jobs: When you ring about an emergency the Smartline operator will page the supervisor who will arrange for the appropriate action to be taken.  Please do not page the supervisor directly.

Typical problems are:

Reluctance to leave the required information on the answer phone when the operator is unavailable.

We receive approximately 110 requests per day, so occasionally the operator may be on another call when you are trying to get through.  If you leave the full details of your fault on the answer phone we will process it as normal - if there are any queries with your message we will contact you.  Do not leave a message that just states “call me back”, as this results in the operators having to make unnecessary calls to find out what the fault is and how urgent it is, etc.  The Smartline office generates twice as many outbound as it does inbound calls because people do not give sufficient details on the answer phone.  We cannot help you if all you leave is a name.  The sooner you provide us with details the sooner we can action your request.

Faults on patient connected electronic equipment being wrongly reported to Smartline.

These should be reported directly to EBME on ext. 2315

Some members of staff not being aware of their location ID number.

This is crucial in the efficient operation of Smartline as the number identifies the location of the fault.  If you are unsure what your ID number is please contact Terry Bird, Works Superintendent on ext. 3852.

Jobs being inappropriately prioritised by the caller. 

57% of all calls are reported as being emergencies, but are they?  A true emergency may necessitate us taking workers from Theatres (for example), so is the call really as urgent as you say it is? Correct prioritisation helps us to assess your calls against each other, and against all others within the system.  Please be considerate and give a genuine assessment of how urgent the fault is. 

We recognise that the priority of a fault can change after it has been reported. Please advise us if this occurs so that we can change its priority.

If there is an emergency outside the operational hours, you need to call the Site Manager on bleep 652, who will in turn contact the senior engineer or craftsman on-call, depending on the priority of the fault you are reporting.

If you would like a member of the works department to attend your team meeting to brief staff on the Smartline procedures, please contact Roger Gembis on ext. 3375.

Documents:

Estates Strategy Document