High-quality healthcare facilities underpin safe care, staff wellbeing, and operational resilience. Yet a large share of the NHS estate is ageing, and the maintenance backlog has climbed to £13.8 bn across England.1 The post-Grenfell regulatory landscape has intensified compliance requirements, demanding more rigorous documentation, reporting, and assurance processes from already stretched teams.
Workforce pressures compound the risk: around 34 per cent of the Estates and Facilities Management (EFM) workforce are aged 55 or older.2 The pressure on the workforce is already showing, with sickness absence in March 2025 averaging 6.57% for ‘hotel, property & estates’, higher than the 4.24% rate for ‘professionally qualified clinical staff’.3
To overcome these challenges, EFM teams need protected time to reflect, collaborate and innovate. However, time is the scarcest resource. As shown in Figure 1, EFM staff spend about 9.6 hours each week searching for information, 3.7 hours reviewing, and 8.7 hours writing compliance and assurance documents.4 That is over 22 hours a week, close to 60% of a 37.5-hour week, absorbed by paperwork rather than planning, engineering and problem-solving. The opportunity is to streamline how staff find, assemble and check information so more of their expertise is applied to improving the estate.
Against this backdrop, the following two frontline accounts explore how estates-specific AI can help. Paul Luxton (Somerset) focuses on improving clarity and consistency in policy review, and Paul Boocock (UHB) lifts the view to system-level efficiency, governance, and workforce development.
From complexity to clarity: How AI is transforming risk and compliance
Paul Luxton says: “Anyone who’s spent more than a few days in NHS estates will know the feeling: you open one guidance document to check a compliance point, only to find it refers you to another, which points to a third…and before you know it, you’re knee-deep in cross-references that don’t quite line up.
“The Building Safety Act alone cites over 146 separate documents. Add in Building Safety Regulator frameworks, HTMs, HBNs, British Standards, and Trust policies, and you’ve got a compliance landscape that’s anything but joined-up. Each document has merit, but together they can pull in different directions, making consistent application a real headache.
“As a head of Acute Estates, with specialist knowledge in various EFM topics, especially fire safety, water safety, and energy management, I’ve spent years chasing down the ‘right’ reference, reconciling conflicts, and ensuring our CAFM data reflects what’s actually happening on the ground. Too often it’s felt like navigating a system designed to challenge us, rather than support us. I’ve had to piece things together the hard way, and I’m determined that embedding consistency of information will support future colleagues to not repeat that journey.
Bringing order to the paperwork puzzle
“It’s exactly because of this fragmented landscape that I’ve become an early supporter of the CompliMind platform. What sets it apart is its ability to draw together regulations that normally sit in isolation, and present them in a way that’s directly usable in our day-to-day documents.
“Instead of leafing through a dozen PDFs, or pausing mid-draft to check an acronym, I can drop a policy or SOP into CompliMind and get structured, contextual feedback. It tells me if the right regulations are referenced, if responsibility allocation is clear, and whether the language stands up to scrutiny under the Building Safety Act.
“This isn’t just a fancy search tool. CompliMind understands the relationships between different standards — whether that’s HTM 05-01, the Fire Safety Order, or Trust procedures — and highlights what’s missing, inconsistent, or needs tightening up. For me, it’s like having a compliance colleague with an encyclopaedic memory, who can recall the exact clause you need, the moment you need it.
“The real game-changer has been the CompliMind Review Assistant. This isn’t just scanning documents or pulling out keywords — it actively evaluates drafts for compliance, showing exactly where an issue lies, which standard it links to, and why it matters. This isn’t ‘AI replacing expertise’. It’s AI augmenting our work — speeding up the review process without sacrificing rigour.
“Currently focused solely on policies, it’s already proving its value. When reviewing a policy, for example, a fire safety policy, it flags vague roles, outdated clauses, and missing references, and points to the source so I can double-check and verify the AI’s logic. That clarity makes staying audit-ready far easier and less time-consuming.
“As a CompliMind Fellow, I’m working alongside the team to expand this beyond policies to cover the full breadth of compliance documentation. Whether it’s procedures, risk assessments, or technical specifications, the ambition is the same: to build a tool that delivers traceable, regulation-linked insight for every type of review we face. In an environment where compliance isn’t optional, and where getting it wrong can have serious consequences, that evolution can’t come soon enough.
“Tools alone don’t deliver change. What’s impressed me most about CompliMind is that it’s being shaped with input from the people who actually use it — from admin staff right through to senior management.
“I joined the CompliMind Fellowship Programme because I believe in the mission: not just to digitise compliance, but to lift the standard across the NHS. When AI takes on the heavy lifting of regulation-checking, it frees up our teams. Junior staff can step in with more confidence, onboarding becomes smoother, and documentation across Trusts becomes more consistent.
Consistency matters
“Consistency is important. At present, different Trusts report in different ways. Departments can interpret the same guidance in completely different terms. With CompliMind, we’ve got a real chance to create shared frameworks, standardised language, and meaningful comparisons across sites. After Grenfell, estates accountability was under more scrutiny than ever, that consistency isn’t just nice to have — it’s a public duty.
“I could have carried on with inherited systems and kept doing things ‘the way they’ve always been done’, but that’s not the future I want to be part of. I want a future where AI doesn’t just save us time — it reduces risk, supports our teams, and raises the bar for how we manage safety in NHS buildings.”
The second perspective widens the lens. Paul Boocock (UHB) looks at the operational picture: delivering savings across a complex estate, strengthening governance and building technical careers as services come back in-house. Here, the tool’s value is system-level: first-draft documents in minutes, on-demand summaries from HTMs and clearer board-level assurance. It also broadens access to guidance so technicians, administrators and new starters can work with confidence without leaning on senior colleagues for every query.
Using AI to support compliance and efficiency
Paul Boocock says: “The NHS faces ongoing challenges managing its buildings and facilities while dealing with tight budgets and rising costs. At University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB), we need to find new ways to deliver our services while meeting demanding financial targets and started using CompliMind in November 2024 to support us in creating documents, reviewing policies, and accessing information specific to NHS infrastructure requirements.
“Our team covers estates, capital projects, facilities, medical engineering, health and safety, and security. We’re actively looking for ways to introduce technology to help us drive efficiency and effectiveness, increase technical capabilities along with the resilience and autonomy of our teams, introduce improved career pathways and increase accessibility to knowledge and new skills while meeting tough savings targets this financial year.
“As part of a three-year transformation programme, we’re focusing on bringing specialist services back in-house that we currently pay contractors to do at high cost. This means we need to increase and upskill the team along with increasing the scope of technical skills and productivity and create clear career paths so they can move into these specialist roles. Our project involves recruiting technicians into higher banded roles with more technical responsibilities. This requires significant investment in training to improve their skills and create proper career progression so that we can increase and maintain higher levels of recruitment and retention.
Increased compliance and governance burden
“The compliance burden has significantly increased over time, with extensive reporting requirements to board-level consuming substantial time and resources. Our governance meetings involve the preparation of detailed documentation, time-consuming processes, and summarising complex papers for assurance reporting and this has driven us to see how we can streamline those assurance requirements. Ensuring compliance with regulatory frameworks and HTMs and HBNs remains paramount and ensuring the team have rapid access to the information to make critical investment decisions with an ageing estate is essential. Challenges exist for investment schemes with short turnaround times and having quality information instantly available to make rapid decisions allows us to respond with the best solutions that make sure optimal quality environments and services are delivered and lifecycle costs and rework are minimised. Rapid access to robust information that can guide the team and help to form internal policy is needed to ensure decisions can be substantiated using an evidence-based approach. This allows for superior values-based decisions to be made, driving up quality, efficiency and safety while meeting heightened regulatory expectations.
“As director, I saw the opportunity for our teams to become involved in this unique pilot of AI technology specifically designed for healthcare estates which could help us with capital projects, compliance oversight and upskilling the teams aligned with our transformation work and associated recruitment programmes.
“In this context, CompliMind has proven a critical tool, offering a distinct advantage over generic AI models such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. Its key differentiator is its ability to integrate NHS-specific documents — policies, specifications, job descriptions, HTMs — and produce context-aware, traceable, and relevant outputs.
“During a recent recruitment campaign, I used CompliMind to co-create technical interview questions aligned to HTMs, policy expectations, and service leadership scenarios. The results were sharp, professional, and fully tailored to the technical requirements of the role.
“Equally powerful was a moment when I wanted a concise overview of the purpose of the Water Safety Group, I typed into CompliMind: ‘Summarise the key purpose of the Water Safety Group’. Within seconds, I had a concise, sourced answer from HTM and HSE guidance. That speed matters — it cuts down decision delays and boosts confidence.
“We’ve also used CompliMind to help draft job descriptions, compliance documents, and policy templates, often starting with a suggested first-draft from the system. This transforms tasks that would take hours into something ready in minutes.
Saving time and money under financial pressure
“Like many trusts, we need to make significant financial savings this year. That’s difficult when running complex, expensive operations. While CompliMind alone won’t deliver all of that, it contributes meaningfully by reducing waste — in time and duplication of effort.
“One of CompliMind’s strengths is how it enables more staff to access the information they need without a laborious documentation review or relying on senior colleagues for every answer. As the pilot expands, we’re seeing uptake across facilities, estates officers, technicians, and business administrators. For many, this is their first hands-on experience with AI and CompliMind’s plain-English, context-specific outputs make it an accessible starting point that builds confidence.
“Whether it’s job descriptions, emails, meeting minutes, or policy updates, CompliMind significantly reduces drafting time. Instead of starting with a blank page, our team often ask CompliMind to create a first version based on NHS best practices and relevant standards. Staff then review and edit. The result is faster delivery with more consistency and fewer omissions.
“We are extending CompliMind access to staff in estates, health and safety, and facilities — teams that regularly produce procedures and risk assessments but may lack immediate access to guidance or confidence in formal writing. For new starters, CompliMind reduces onboarding time by helping them produce compliant work independently from day one.
“Early results (time savings, improved document quality, and stronger compliance confidence) support expanding CompliMind to additional non-clinical teams. We are exploring integration into formal training and CPD pathways, with usage data and feedback shaping its evolution. CompliMind is more than an efficiency tool. From our experience we have seen it develop over the pilot phase, and it is continuing to rapidly evolve with new features and greater depth of information. It’s a practical way to help NHS estates teams focus on safety, quality, and service outcomes over administrative burden. As operational pressures grow, AI tools like CompliMind will be essential to increase efficiency and empower our teams with rapidly accessible information to increase knowledge and maintain standards while meeting financial targets.”
Conclusion
Both accounts point in the same direction. AI supports, rather than replaces, professional judgement. Used with care, it shortens the path from question to clause, improves consistency and frees time for higher value work. The pilots indicate a practical route to safer, better managed healthcare environments under real world constraints.
We are fortunate to be working with innovative organisations and EFM professionals who are willing to test and shape new methods. Together we are co-creating practical compliance and reporting workflows that give boards clear assurance that facilities are safe, efficient and sustainable, without adding to staff burden. The aim is simple: traceable, auditable processes that are easy to run in busy teams. Built this way, tomorrow’s budgets and workforces can meet rising demand effectively and confidently.
References
1 NHS England. Estates Returns Information Collection, Summary page and dataset for ERIC 2023/24. London: NHS England; 2024.
2 NHS England. Estates and Facilities Workforce Action Plan. London: NHS England; 2022.
3 NHS Digital. NHS Sickness Absence Rates, March 2025. London: NHS England; 2025.
4 CompliMind. NHS Estates & Facilities Time-use Survey 2024—2025: interim findings (n=324). Cambridge. Data collected May 2024-Aug 2025.