The Conclude Consultancy

The work of the Conclude Consultancy Limited redefines how we design, build and operate hospitals. Our work delivers multi-million Euro capital expenditure savings. A big claim perhaps, but our customers are our biggest supporters, as too are respected industry commentators:

Dr David Pencheon OBE, Director of the NHS Sustainability wrote of our work:

“It’s an impressive way of thinking through an important dimensions of sustainable, flexible and cost effective management of estate – and probably an important step on the way to a more coherent approach to assessing health service premises.”

Dr Pencheon made this statement a few years ago, however only a few months ago (June 2016) one customer wrote:

“Dr Bacon showed to us the relationship between the alternative ways that clinical services could be operated and what the impact on space and energy consumption would be…he has been very inspiring and helped us to learn so much, which has then helped us to ask ourselves new questions in the context of hospital planning and operations, a knowledge that we carry with us in both current and upcoming projects”

Mrs Anneli Falk, Clinical Project Lead, Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset, Göteborg, Sweden.

Our proposition in the market is quite simply this:

For hospitals that need to achieve more with less resource and energy Conclude is an independent expert that sets new standards in hospital space and energy usage.  The value that we deliver is substantial: Typically we identify 15-30% overall space savings compared to conventional practice. Translated into monetary terms on a typical 250 bed bed hospital we would expect to conservatively save around 5,000 m2 of clinical space or about €18m in capital expenditure. Consequential savings from ‘right-sizing’ engineering plant infrastructure, where typically we can achieve 20-30% savings in capacity, amount to about €20m  in capital expenditure. With smaller facilities achieving the same patient throughput as larger more expensive facility the forecast impact on energy consumption is also substantial, where we can expect to halve forecast energy consumption compared to current UK performance.  The following Case Studies explain how we achieve these remarkable results.

Case Studies:

1. Space efficient hospitals – A case study that demonstrates our innovative Occupancy Analytics (TM) method based on a whole hospital simulation, where we analyse patient pathways and model the demand for all resources – one of the most costly of them being space. How often do we hear that ” this is what we need, but it is unaffordable!” The case study explains how these competing objectives were reconciled for a new hospital in Gothenburg…

– Right_sizing case study

2. Energy efficient hospitals – A case study that demonstrates the value of Occupancy Analytics data to transform the accuracy of energy simulations, which are often very inaccurate. Uniquely we directly correlate clinical service delivery to energy consumption. In this way we are able to forecast energy consumption at specialism level in the hospital and develop policies with the clinical leadership team to drive energy out of their processes.

Whilst this was a pilot project in Sweden to demonstrate what is possible, it most definitely can be applied to much larger projects, as we have done on a £480m NHS hospital project in the UK. The single most obvious means of achieving energy efficient hospitals is to make them space efficient. 

– Low energy hospital case study

3. Leveraging hospital data –  to create new insights into optimisation of clinical service delivery leading to the optimisation of space: examples from various projects to demonstrate how we use hospital data to transform the clinician’s understanding of space utilisation. This body of work clearly demonstrates how ‘formulaic standards’ and ‘best practice’ guidance leads to over-sized (space inefficient) facilities .  We also explain a unique strategy which we refer to as ‘peak-load smoothing’ – a means for managing both patient flow (whilst improving staff and patient wellbeing) and driving down peak energy consumption – all at the same time!

A common theme through these example of optimisation is one of risk management – the potential risk of hospitals being too large or too small – the potential risk of not achieving challenging energy targets – the consequential risks to staff and patient wellbeing. We highlight the impact of activities beyond the ‘walls of the hospital’ that must be considered for efficient hospital operations.

– Optimising Day Surgery case study