Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110

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i+DCS cleans the new Bristol 'Super hospital'

i+DCS the specialist cleaning division of leading healthcare cleaning contractor CK Group, has carried out the commissioning clean for the newly opened Brunel Building at Southmead, the so-called 'Super hospital' in Bristol.

Replacing two smaller hospitals, Southmead is said to set the standard for healthcare in the UK, with over 114,000 sq m and more than 5,000 rooms.

With a demanding time scale, North Bristol NHS Trust awarded the contract for the commissioning clean to CK Group after an exhaustive Tendering procedure.

It was a decision that was fully justified, according to Fiona Ross, facilities project manager: "CK have been brilliant. Communication was good and they were very flexible, handling the whole job in a tight timescale.

"The new hospital is over 5,000 rooms and spaces, with many specialist rooms, 24 operating theatres, hydrotherapy, MRI, and 23 wards; 75% of all patient rooms are single occupancy - more single rooms than any other hospital in the country. There are eight regeneration kitchens, a central production unit and restaurant.

"Because we'd gone out quite late we were expecting our chosen contractor to mobilise in a short time, which was added pressure. So we needed to have the confidence that the selected company could deliver in the available timescale."

Once CK Group was appointed it had just five weeks to mobilise, including sourcing and training local labour, who it was hoped would subsequently join the Trust's 'bank' team.

"CK not only did the commissioning clean and on-going maintenance cleaning for us, we also needed them to clean all the transferring equipment," said Fiona. "They also did a lot of reactive cleaning too. They were very flexible."

The timescale for such a massive cleaning task was certainly very tight.

"The handover from Carillion (responsible for the builder's clean) to the Trust was planned for 27 March, with 12 May scheduled for the first patient move," said Fiona.

According to Karen Brown, front of house facilities manager, "CK's supervisors were very experienced. They had a calmness which was great in a pressure situation with impending move dates looming. They got on with the job in hand even though there were lots of factors going on that could stop it being a smooth process."

CK Group's healthcare division manager, Ashley Heming, who assembled the specialist teams and oversaw the project, explained: "We'd already undertaken a number of major hospital contracts: UCLH, Lewisham, Broomfield, Pembury, two PFI buildings at North Middlesex, the first and second phases of Bart's, and other specialist work across the country.

"While in square metres, Southmead is the largest we've done so far, Pembury was the biggest contract overall as we were also responsible for the de-commissioning clean and at Bart's were doing both the builder's clean and the make-ready clean.

"It takes up to three months for dust to settle in a new facility, so we re-clean every four days, constantly keeping it clean until occupation. The size of the maintenance cleaning team grows as we complete more and more of the area. We had 35 staff on site at the peak of the contract."

The final phase saw CK undertake a full audit of the work using Credits for Cleaning, the popular cleanliness monitoring tool. C4C is web-based and once uploaded to the Cloud all the information is available for the hospital. The Trust can use it to monitor performance in the future.

About i+DCS

i+DCS (Intensive Deep Clean Systems), the specialist healthcare division of CK Group provides deep cleaning and infection control services for NHS Trusts, Primary Care Trusts, clinics, and nursing homes using specialised equipment for bed frame decontamination, ultrasonic immersion for patient equipment, air management of wards and isolation rooms, zone control matting, and microfibre, including in-house laundering of used cloths.

For more information contact:

CK Group
Tel: 020 8659 6748
Fax: 020 8659 6780
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.ckgroupservices.com

26th June 2014