CLIENT: Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust
PROJECT DETAILS: Stafford Hospital Ventilation Review
NIFES ROLE: Compliance of Ventilation System’s Management
Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust (Stafford Hospital): due to reconfiguring of local area NHS trust’s and hospitals, Stafford Hospital became County Hospital and is part of the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust. As part of their change process NIFES were commissioned to carry out a number of compliance assessments for Stafford Hospital.
The hospital has many installed ventilation systems providing comfort conditioning of air to areas such as: high dependency units, theatres, laboratories, wards, clinical areas and general areas. The hospital also has an abundance of extraction system’s such as: general extraction and LEV systems which were all to be compliance assessed.
An assessment of the Management of the Ventilation Systems was carried out; taking into consideration the requirements of COSHH, British Standards, HSG 258, Health Technical Memorandum’s (HTM’s) & best practice guidance from CIBSE. The assessment was conducted through: interviews, analytical Inspection of documents, site inspections and management procedures.
Detailed reports were compiled of the: maintenance systems, operation, control, management structure, Health & Safety Impact and the compliance of the installed systems. The reports produced, summarised the findings and gave a risk assessed action plan.
County Hospital (Stafford Hospital) now have:
- More efficient ventilation systems having greater control over their use.
- Reduced costs.
- Reduce third party costs, due to the simplification of controls.
- Harmonised work systems throughout the management and maintenance teams.
- Greater client / stakeholder satisfaction.
- Non-compliance overview.
- Greater systems awareness.
- Refined PPM schedules.
- Greater overall managerial control of Ventilation Health and Safety .
- Risk assessed action plan.
To effectively manage Ventilation Systems organisations must take into consideration the requirements of COSHH, British Standards, HSG 258, Health Technical Memorandum’s (HTM’s) & best practice guidance from CIBSE