Key Facts
Name:Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Location:Leeds, West Yorkshire
Size:5 hospitals & support sites
Type:Support & Compliance, Air Conditioning & Ventilation, Refrigeration, Catering
Case Study
Leeds Teaching Hospitals
Background
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the UK’s largest NHS trusts. With over 18,000 staff, a £1bn budget and serving over 5.4 million people, it is one of the largest employers in West Yorkshire. The five hospitals and their supporting sites contain critical equipment that must be kept operational to ensure the trust can provide its essential services to the public. We are one of the largest contractors responsible for keeping the trust up-and-running.
Support Services
We provide a variety of support & compliance services across the trust, looking after a large variety of air conditioning, refrigeration and catering facilities throughout their five campuses.
It’s not hard to imagine why hospital equipment and facilities are mission-critical. From operating theatres to CT scanners, blood testing facilities to mortuaries and specialist catering services to blood-banks, they are all vital to the operation of the trust.
Some of the trusts’ most important equipment relies on our reactive repair & proactive maintenance services. Large equipment, such as CT & MRI scanners and large blood-testing machinery, all produce immense amounts of heat. They rely on air conditioning to keep them operational – if it fails, rooms rapidly become too hot and the equipment is shut down and rendered useless.
Likewise, operating theatres are reliant on clinically-clean air conditioning to keep environments at a precise temperature and free of dust and bacteria. Operations cannot be carried out without its proper function.
Lastly, a large variety of refrigeration and catering facilities rely on our support to operate. The trust operate an external catering preparation facility which prepares and distributes meals across all five trust hospitals. This facility is entirely chilled, ensuring food that is destined for vulnerable patients is kept at the correct temperatures throughout storage, preparation and transport. Acme not only maintains and reacts to all refrigeration and air conditioning equipment for this facility, but carried out a full refit in 2016. Likewise, Acme also provide refrigeration support for blood-fridges and mortuaries throughout the hospital estate, which are also critical to the trusts’ operation.
The pressure and demands that we put on Acme are huge. The knowledge that these guys have is vast after being here for five years now. As a refrigeration and air conditioning contractor, we couldn’t recommend Acme enough.” Robert Head, Estates Officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
The End Result
Robert Head, Estates Officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said “There’s a front-of-house and a back-of-house element to a hospital – the patients and visitors will only see the public areas, but as you can expect, there will be vast areas behind the scenes that need to be maintained properly to keep the front-of-house running.”
“Out of all the external contractors that we use, Acme are by far the largest that we deal with. Acme provide us with a really good service, looking after our refrigeration and air conditioning systems, even down to research and development centres, mortuaries and cold rooms.”
“The pressure and demands that we put on Acme are huge. We have various pieces of equipment from air handling units to chiller units; these are based on rooftops and can be quite complicated to get to and tricky to work on. The knowledge that these guys have is vast after being here for five years now. It really is a benefit to us as a department and the trust.”
“On site, we have one of the largest blood testing facilities in the country. That facility really does depend on air conditioning keeping it cool. The tracking system in there will cut out at 26 degrees, so having the facility to keep it cool really is critical.”
“Patients & visitors will regularly see MRI scanners and CT scanners. These pieces of equipment generate a huge amount of heat, so the ongoing cooling requirement in these areas is critical.”
Robert concluded with, “As a refrigeration and air conditioning contractor, we couldn’t recommend Acme enough”.