Celebrating our hidden heroes

As June 15 marks the first National Healthcare Estates and Facilities Day, we want to take the opportunity to tell you more about how the work done by this amazing and diverse team helps us to care for patients in our hospitals.

It's also a great excuse to showcase all huge range of careers on offer, spanning a wide range of roles and offering everything from full time posts to flexible working.

You can find out more about what's on offer here - but don't take our word for it. Check out the stories of some of our teams about what it's really like working in Estates and Facilities.

When you book into our on-site accommodation, you get so much more than just a room, as we found out when we caught up with Senior Customer Services Officer Dianne Ellis and Acting Senior Customer Service Officer Chrissy Wigglesworth.

?Dianne rather modestly summed up their role saying: “We look after the accommodation for doctors, locums, agency nurses, students – anyone who requires hospital accommodation who’s working for the Trust.”

However, as our chat continued, it quickly became clear that that’s just the tip of the iceberg for this dedicated and hard-working team.

With people coming and going every day, it’s very similar to managing a hotel. However, this is where the similarity ends. You’re not checked into a room and then forgotten about - these ladies genuinely want to make sure you’re safe and happy and help you to settle into the area.

“We’re here to help people,” Chrissy, who is currently seconded to Scunthorpe from Grimsby, added. “A lot of the people who use our accommodation come from abroad, so we help them to transition as they come into this country for the first time.

“We give them information about the local facilities. For example, in Grimsby, we tell them about the shops and restaurants in Scartho village – that sort of thing.

“For many of them, even simple things like the kitchens and cooking facilities are completely different to what they’re used to, so we help them get to grips with how to use everything and we’ll also help them to get everything they need up and running – such as proof of address for banks.”

But the support they give goes beyond just the practical, as Dianne explained.

She said: “For some of the young doctors and nurses, especially when they’re coming to us from abroad, it can be quite daunting. We want to help them, and we reassure them that they’re safe; it’s a secure building. We take them under our wing a little bit and try and help in any way that we can.

“The A&E doctors are lovely. With everything they go through, we try and accommodate them in any way we can, and they are so grateful for what we do.”

Their caring nature was particularly appreciated by the staff living in our on-site accommodation during the pandemic.

Dianne said: “I will be honest; I was scared when Covid broke out. I was terrified. It was just me and Chrissy and we were providing accommodation for doctors who couldn’t go home because of Covid; they couldn’t go back to their families as they had vulnerable family members at home.”

Chrissy added: “We managed all the deliveries of food while people needed to self-isolate on top of everything else. It was really important to us that they got their food and drink. It was a really tough time, but it made us stronger.”

Working so closely to the residents, they become far more than customers to the team.

Dianne said: “We do feel quite sad when they leave, especially when they have been here for some time, but we’re really proud that we have been able to help them to settle and find a permanent home.”

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As the mighty Dave Grohl says, there never seems to be enough space – but thanks to Katherine Green in our Estates and Facilities' Commercial team, we ensure we make the most of ours.

Whenever changes are made to how we use an area, Katherine is on hand to help us ensure that we’re optimising it to give us – and, more importantly, our patients – what we need.

She said: “With all the building work that has been going on recently, a lot of people will know me from the work I have done to relocate people into new “Homes” or temporary accommodation, but this is only a small part of my job.

“One of the most important aspects of the role is continuously reviewing our acute and community sites and how we’re using the space available to us to ensure we’re meeting national guidance for providing effective, efficient, and safe patient care.

“As all of our clinical services expand, I know all too well the fantastic staff behind it keep their services running, with team expansion comes additional space requirements which can always be a challenge.”

“It’s really important that we get this right, as it can have an impact on the funding the Trust is awarded.

“The nature of this job is that it’s never ending – there’s always something changing and that’s what keeps it interesting.”

?Earlier this year Emma Barrett became our Trust’s first female Engineer – taking control of our Building Management Systems across our sites.

It’s not a career she ever set out to go into but, having started working in administration for the Trust in 2009, her excellent skills and interest in problem solving shone through.

As a result, Emma took the opportunity to move into roles that allowed her to grow and develop her talents – and she’s never looked back.

She said: “I never had that ‘when I grow up I want to be a…’. I have always worked on the basis of looking at the opportunity put in front of me and seeing what comes along.

“When I first started with the Trust I had just had my second child. I took on a 12 month fixed-term contract in training and development and really enjoyed it.

“I wanted to stay in the NHS and an opportunity came up to work in admin within our Estates and Facilities team.

“I love problem solving and computers, playing with software and understanding how things work.

“I’ve always been intrigued by what other people do and I had an interest in the role of our data analysts, so when a role came up in Compliance and Information that allowed me to do it, I went for it.

“But I love Estates and Facilities. I really like having an understanding of how everything works to support the clinical staff and knowing that we can’t work without them and they can’t work without us.

“I got the opportunity in the last year to come back into Estates and Facilities as a Project Manager, looking after the removal of the old coal fired boilers at our hospital in Goole and implementing more sustainable and energy efficient systems.

“I have been really lucky in working closely with our now Director of Estates and Facilities Jug Johal and the Deputy Director of Estates and Facilities Simon Tighe.

“Simon has been a really great mentor and has always pushed me to develop further in Estates and Facilities.

“I kept getting told ‘this is a launch pad for you Em’ and it really has been. I think my background in administration has stood me in good stead in a number of ways.

“I’ve brought my organisational and problem solving skills to the role but I have also benefitted from my overall experiences to date, watching other managers and how they work and taking advice from my line managers.

?“In the last 12 months, I have been able to focus more on the analytical side of things – like looking at the Building Management System and how things work. I’ve loved figuring out how a computer system can tell an air handling system unit to switch on or off.

“It’s through this that I have had the opportunity to become the Building Management System Engineer, which will also enable me to undertake a degree funded by the Trust.

“I never set out to be a female engineer but I feel like I have definitely found my niche.

“Everyone has been so supportive and happy to answer any questions I have and explain to me how things work when I don’t know. This team is like a family and many of them have seen me grow into this role over the years.

“My advice to anyone wanting to get into this kind of role is just to take the opportunities that are offered to you and ask questions – lots of questions!”

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Wherever you start out in Estates and Facilities, it can turn out to be the route to a career you never expected, as Project Manager Tom Doo discovered.

He trained as an electrician but found that the lifestyle that went with it – especially long periods working away from home – just wasn’t working for him anymore.

He said: “We’d just bought a house and I found I just wasn’t spending enough time at home, so I decided to look for something else.

“I saw a job advertised in Estates and Facilities as a general maintenance worker and thought that would good to tide me over until I decided what I wanted to do next.

“After I came for the interview, I was taken on as an electrician – which was perfect for me at the time.

“Since then, I have developed my skills and moved into Capital Projects, where I have overseen the work being done to upgrade some of our key systems, such as the fire alarm at Grimsby Hospital.

“Working in Estates and Facilities in the NHS has given me a career I really enjoy, doing something I’d never considered before – and it also allows me to have more time at home with my family, which is really important to me.”