Behind the Building

In the third of our #BehindtheBuilding series looking at the new Emergency Care Building (ECB), we talk to Bryonie Deeming who works at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust as the Future Hospital Programme Planning Manager. 

Can you tell us a bit about your role?

My role is essentially a back-office coordination role. Some of my responsibilities include managing our Project Management Office (PMO) and governance controls, coordinating and trying to improve our reporting visibility within the Trust and externally, and supporting tracking of our programme process. You can't just let the building go up - it’s really important to make sure you're hitting your key milestones. Early reporting of anything that might cause a delay to that is really vital. Alongside that, I also support the management of all of our risks and issues, and I work really closely with lots of our stakeholders. 

Why is it so important to work closely with stakeholders?

Obviously, we're building a really big building, so there's lots of people moving into that building and lots of people we've got to speak to, to make sure that we're delivering what we've promised in our business case. 

We've got a really diverse group of stakeholders here. Some of our stakeholders include clinical teams and patient representative groups, as well as internal supporting teams such as Estates, Facilities and Hotel Services - all of the back office functions that quite often people forget about. It’s really important that they're fully engaged in the building because when this building is finished, those teams are going to be running it. So we have to make sure they're in and engaged now and that we haven't put cupboards in the wrong place and just silly things that some people might not think is really important, but it is. It's absolutely vital to how the building works. 

Other stakeholders that we work with are our external contractors - we've got a really good close working relationship with our principal supply chain partner, Willmott Dixon. They're the guys that are actually putting the building up in front of the hospital now. We also have a number of external consultancies that we're involved with that help us manage our contract with them.

How long have you been working with the Future Hospital team?

I've been working in the team here for four years now, since 2021, and it's been unreal. The journey has been incredible. I've never experienced anything like it in my NHS career. We've had incredible peaks where we've been so busy that I've been on teams calls at home until midnight with finance colleagues trying to get the business case over the line … and the absolute feeling of relief when we finally had approval from Treasury - it's just incredible really. You can't put it into words, the relief that we all felt when that finally went through. And now, just a year later, the building is already going up immensely quickly. 

Are you pleased with the progress so far?

The team have really pulled their fingers out this year, especially considering all of the rain that we've had this year. We've had absolutely unprecedented weather conditions and the Willmott Dixon team have been fantastic at getting ahead on the parts of the building that they can do, whilst other pieces have been delayed and so far we haven't really fallen behind on programme. It's been really well managed by them and that is in part due to our excellent working relationship we have where we can touch base on things really quickly. We're not necessarily waiting for reports to come out - we're having these conversations on a daily basis and I think that's really important to maintain. 

What is it like seeing the building go from paper to reality?

It's quite difficult for me, being ‘directionally challenged’ to work out where the corridors are and which section covers which area, on these lovely plans that we've had for so long now. But I think as the building starts to go up, layer on layer, I'll start to see how a lot of these spaces are going to work. When we go down and have a site tour, standing in a corner of the building we'll be told by the contractor “right, so at the moment you're standing in sort of bay six of the new emergency department”, and when you start to see it like that and you can reimagine the plans and put the plans on the floor and get into the map, if you like, like Joey from Friends - it's really cool. It's absolutely incredible to see. I'm learning so much on a daily basis about how all of this works - it's incredible. 

Is there more to this project than simply construction?

The Future Hospital Programme is such a big programme of work. It isn't just building this building and then saying, here you go, we built you this building, move in and start delivering care in this new space. We have to make sure all of our staff are ready for it. Even though the building won't be opening until 2029, we are starting some smaller projects now, such as emergency planning and resilience - we have to get all of these things in place.

We're a Major Trauma Centre here at Derriford, so we need to make sure that we're working with our emergency planning colleagues to ensure that we can provide the best care should something terrible happen in Plymouth, and we need to respond to a major incident. So that's one of the things we're looking at.

Another thing we're getting in on early is wayfinding, because we recognize that we're a bit of a sprawling site, and when you're in the building, depending on which floor you're on, it can be quite difficult to find your way to a different part of the building if you're in the wrong zone. We need to make sure that, when we build this building, we've made clear how we access one part of the building from the other.

One of the things that we decided early on was that we would coordinate a group of clinical SROs, Senior Responsible Officers, and we've got a really engaged group of clinical SROs from across all of the specialties that the building will impact on. They're such a fantastic team to work with. There's not a thing that they don't know about their areas, and it's really important that we maintain that engagement with them and keep their support, because at the end of the day, not only are they moving into the building, but at the moment now they're reassuring all of their colleagues that this is happening.

What do you think will be the key benefits of the new ECB?

I think that when the building finally opens, one of the most immediate impacts we'll see is going to be ambulance handover delays. We'll probably see those just written off. I think the building is going to hugely support with flow through the building.

My main hope for the new building is that when our staff move into it, that we've created a space that they feel safe in and look forward to coming to work in every day. I really hope that we don't move into this building and work in the same way that we've been working. It's a brand-new opportunity, and we need to make the most of that and work in a different way, to serve our patients. I'm so excited about how that's all going to come together. 

What are you most looking forward to?

So many people and so many diverse skills go into making this hospital work, it's amazing really. We've got our own little village here. I feel really lucky to be part of such a fantastic team on the cusp of delivering such a huge project for the Trust, and a real legacy for the people and the community that we serve. I can't wait until we get to delivery and people start to move in and use the new space