October 7, 2008

Future of Canada’s Infrastructure Seminar

Facility managers and service providers must be full partners on P3 projects, expert says

DAN O’REILLY

correspondent

Cleaners and catering staff are important players in the design of hospitals and other buildings delivered through public-private partnerships (P3s), participants at a recent infrastructure conference in Toronto were told.

“They know where the dust will be found. That’s why you need cleaners and caterers involved in driving the building design,” said Paul Dalglish, managing director of Serco Group Canada, a division of the British-based international public service management company.

“If the clinicians drive the design, they won’t understand how to make the building efficient and easy to manage. They won’t know the places were dust can accumulate or the features that make pest control more difficult.”

Dalglish made those comments during a speech at the Future of Canada’s Infrastructure, a two-day Strategy Institute seminar on the challenges and solutions to this country’s infrastructure deficit.

Public-private partnerships are an efficient, timely and cost-effective method to deliver projects, said Dalglish. referring to studies by Serco’s research division and other sources that show many large government projects delivered through more traditional methods are over budget and late. “That doesn’t happen with P3s.”

But the main point of his presentation was to make the case that the companies that manage prisons, hospitals, and other public facilities delivered under the P3 model must be equal partners with the architects and contractors and fully involved in the design from day one.

The design and construction of a building may take three or four years, a relatively short period of time when compared to a services lifespan of as much as 30 or 40 years, he said.

“To those who manage services in these facilities, day after day, year after year, it is obvious that service design must be the priority from the outset.”

Rather than blaming the design/build team for a problem, an operator with a stake in the overall project is more likely to look for solutions.

They can and will make recommendations that will completely change the service-delivery approach with the result there may be a reduction or even the elimination of the physical infrastructure.

This could be extended health care or electronically supervised prisoner release programs, he said. “You don’t need to build as many beds if you can keep people out of the facilities.”

A major example of a how a service-provider influenced a building design is the Manchester Aquatics Centre, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

The private operator worked with the architects to build a facility that, not only provided a venue for the games, but also resulted in a long-term efficient and effective building.

An example was the redesign of the reception, catering and ancillary to facilitate the most appropriate flow of people through the building on an ongoing basis rather than simply an event-driven basis.

Early consideration of the flow of people and goods in the design of P3 prisons has also generated significant benefits. More efficient layouts reduce the number of staff needed to escort prisoners around the facility, thus reducing operation costs and reducing time lost from training, education, and other critical out-of-cell activities.

Similarly simple steps such as locating showers and telephones in the housing wings have made P3 prisons more efficient than public facilities, since fewer staff are required to manage prisoner movement, he said.

Dalglish said that in some P3 hospitals the service providers have integrated automated waste-disposal into the design. Its value is not just a practical solution to reduce staff, it’s about risk management.

“Most needle-stick injuries are incurred by porters and cleaning staff when they are handling bedding — not by the doctors and nurses.”

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