Medway NHS adopts BIS Consult’s fire risk management platform

Medway NHS Foundation Trust is a single-site hospital Trust based in Gillingham, Kent, serving more than 427,000 people across Medway and Swale. The trust is using the BIS Lens system, created by BIS Consult, to bring together and analyse fire risk assessment information centrally, in a digital format.

New insights generated from the BIS Lens interactive dashboards will support fire safety review meetings and help guide the trust’s investment decisions by making it easier to identify priority risks, outstanding actions and recurring themes across the whole estate, such as further fire risk assessments, fire door replacement or new evacuation plans. In one example, using the tool to examine fire assessments collectively revealed how a single, estate-wide approach to cabling issues would be more cost-effective than several individual repairs.

Neil McElduff, director of estates and facilities at the trust, said: “The new system is a significant step in our shift towards digital. It underpins the strategic direction of fire safety management and will help maintain a safe environment across our hospital. The work to date shows the system’s potential to drive similar insights for other critical areas of risk and compliance across the trust.”

Like many NHS estates, the trust’s fire safety information was previously held across numerous separate records and documents, making it difficult to analyse information collectively. Jason Brittin, capital projects/programme manager for the trust, led the project. He said: “The BIS Consult solution has demonstrated how we can transform the way we manage fire safety information across our hospital estate. The improved visibility of risk will help our fire safety and estates teams prioritise action, support regulatory compliance and make more efficient investment decisions.”

The new structured digital approach supports NHS guidance for managing fire safety, including HTM 05-03, which explains how NHS organisations should assess fire risk, and HTM 05-01, which provides the wider framework for managing fire safety across healthcare buildings. It also supports the golden thread.