How Digital Transformation Improved Facilities Management at Queensland Children's Hospital

The Company

Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH) is a leading specialist statewide hospital dedicated to providing the highest quality care for children and young people across Queensland and northern New South Wales. Located in South Brisbane, QCH is a 359-bed facility that offers a comprehensive range of pediatric services, including general and specialized medical, surgical, and emergency care.

As Queensland’s only specialist pediatric hospital, QCH is at the forefront of pediatric healthcare, education, and research. It serves as a major teaching and research center, collaborating with prestigious institutions such as the University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology. The hospital is also home to the Centre for Children’s Health Research, which focuses on cutting-edge child and adolescent health research.

The Challenge

Facilities management for Queensland Children’s Health involves much data moving between internal staff, contractors and sub-contractors across multiple divisions. This recent precinct of the hospital hosts 359 beds and required the ability to store, edit, collaborate and share more than 45,000 architectural drawings.

The underlying requirement in the management of facilities operations was a need for a mechanism by which the organization could integrate asset data and engineering drawings while managing version control in a data compliant way. The other crucial component was a need for a single reference source point that could bring together information being shared across internal staff and outsourced contractors.

Adding another layer of complexity, the service delivery model was a totally outsourced structure to Honeywell Building Services. There were also more than 20 specialist subcontractors, so the need to manage and maintain a system that could provide the data across staff, contractors and sub-contractors was pivotal to operational success.

With an operation of this scale, being able to have quick access to the most current versions of engineering drawings and data was critical to conduct safe and efficient maintenance work. Ensuring facilities are running at optimal levels with minimal downtime is absolutely pivotal to the provision of ideal patient care – which for the Queensland Children’s Health team, is at the heart of everything they do.

This precinct of the hospital is 359 beds – so from a clinical perspective, you want your child to be looked after instantly, in this moment. And that’s the number one priority. If I can have the facilities working ASAP to allow that to happen. That is a fabulous outcome.”

– Detlef Murach, Building Document Coordinator

The Solution

RedEye provided an interconnected digital ecosystem. One single source of organization-wide truth to store, add and edit asset data and architectural drawings (maintaining version control).

RedEye became the tool by which Queensland Children’s Health could execute safe and timely maintenance work.

This project required ingesting 45,000 artifacts for the 359 bed precinct. Working across more than 20 contractors and sub-contractors, the team could simply and efficiently plan and execute safe maintenance work, with certainty that the data being referred to was the latest information.

The Benefits

Functionally, the time saving from adopting the RedEye solution was very visible. The solution not only provided a framework to manage and share asset data in a compliant way but reduced the amount of time spent searching for versions of information. The metadata tagging functionality within the solution reduced the search time, for staff and contractors. Being able to alter that metadata to suit the individual situation means it can be very specific and the ability to view it and refine it delivers optimum transparency. The version history and tracking provide complete assurance that the information being worked with is the most current. RedEye checked and reviewed the data being uploaded, so if there are formatted minimum requirements missing, it prompts for these to be physically checked with the contractor or staff member.

As work was being completed, the drawings could be marked-up on a tablet, phone screen or by hand and saved into RedEye. This gave the team a timely and accurate picture of the asset landscape. They were also able to respond to issues in a much more efficient manner. The Queensland Children’s Health team are now able to manage and respond to issues a lot quicker, ultimately delivering a positive impact on the provision of ideal patient care.

We have 45,000 drawings and more than 20 contractors to manage. It allows us to respond  a lot quicker to issues that we have in the hospital, especially the more difficult to find issues.”

– Bruce Bonney, Facilities Maintenance Manager