Space to care: Digital management

HEJ: You started out in commercial real estate — what drew you into the NHS estate, and how different has the experience been compared to the private sector? What keeps you motivated?

Chris King: My first career was in recruitment, and I was doing recruitment for a property recruitment company, and I just absolutely loved what these people were doing. So, I finally realised what I wanted to do.

So, I went back and retrained and my career since has been in property. I started at CBRE, and I moved to Knight Frank, and my background has been commercial real estate investment and development mainly.

I ended up coming to NHS Property Services because I wanted to give back. I know that’s probably a standard thing for a lot of people working in the health sector.

We love the NHS. I think everyone does. It’s a really important institution. We all want to maintain it, we all want to protect it. We all want it to keep going. I came here really as a as an opportunity to give back to the NHS.

And it’s lovely. It’s lovely to finish the work day and though it’s challenging and may be really busy, you know you’re making a difference.

That’s such a nice answer. I’m guessing that’s what keeps you there, even when you do have long days, difficult conversations, long deadlines. You know you’re doing it because you’re getting that sense that you’re giving something back and it feels good.

Yeah, 100%.

Can you tell me a bit about NHS Open Space — how would you describe it in simple terms — what problem does it solve?

NHS Open Space is a space management solution. It does two things: if you are a healthcare estate leader, it gives you the tools to be able to either understand, to manage, or to optimise their space. Then, for services, for people who are delivering services to patients, Open Space can provide them with a booking platform, which is open for them to be able to see all of the spaces in one place.

Think of it as a sort of like a Right Move meets Booking.com style where all the space is available, and it just makes it very easy for them to be able to find the space that they need, book it, and then they know that they can turn up and use it.

So, the focus on the services is not to worry about the space. They can find it within a couple of minutes. They can book it and then they can purely focus on patient delivery.

So in terms of the biggest challenge, would that be educating people about how to book the space, or to actually get them to use the technology? I know sometimes uptake can be quite tricky.

Yes, we call it change management, but it’s exactly that. In the NHS, the focus isn’t always on the estate, because rightly so the focus is on treating people, and caring for patients. So, when you’re trying to implement a new process which will benefit them, but it’s a change to what has been used historically, time needs to be spent on communicating with staff and helping to educate on these systems. We need to explain why we’re doing this and why it’s a benefit for them, and for the NHS.

The fantastic thing is that once we’ve done that, and one it’s been implemented, what we find is the system we’ve built does mimic usual processes that would be typical in everyday life.

It’s the same sort of process as booking a cinema ticket or a hotel room. The system works in a very similar fashion. So once people in healthcare have used the system and understand it, we see an incredibly high adoption rate.

So, it’s similar to booking a cinema ticket, for example. Is it intuitive or can it be integrated with other services, such as Google calendar? Can you use it on your phone or a computer? How did you design the user interface to be as friendly as possible?

We can do all of the those things. You could open your phone now and search for NHS Open Space and it will come up. It can be used on a tablet, laptop or desktop. It’s there and available.

It’s very easy to use, very intuitive.

For example, if you want to run a new service and need two rooms in Reading for two mornings a week over the next two years, you can find and book that space in minutes. As long as you are registered and vetted, you can book it and use it.

So you’re opening Open Space to other organisations and charities. Can you tell me more about that process and why you’ve chosen to do that?

We have both clinical and non-clinical spaces available. Clinical space includes things like treatment and consulting rooms, while non-clinical space might be meeting rooms or offices. Everyone has to register and be vetted, and we check qualifications and ensure the services being provided are appropriate and complementary to the NHS.

One of the reasons we built Open Space from scratch was patient safety. We did not want a charity that was approved to book meeting rooms to then be able to book clinical rooms. The system has checks and balances so that organisations can only access the type of space they are approved to use.

Since 2019, we have provided around 730,000 hours of charitable and PCN support, including around 220,000 hours in the last 12 months alone. That equates to roughly £4.8 m of discounted or free bookings.

The recent pilot in South East London and Staffordshire showed some strong results. What’s the feedback you’ve found most surprising and/or encouraging from NHS staff and partners using the platform?

The pilot was with a Community Health Partnership. The background to Open Space is that we originally created it to solve our flexible space problem, essentially our bookable space. However, as we built the system, we started to see other parts of the system coming to us and saying, “We quite like to use that for our bookable space as well.” That then led to the question of whether it could also be used as an internal working system for organisations.

From there, it expanded further, with people telling us, “We would love to use it, but actually we have no idea how our space is being used.” They saw that we were using sensors and understanding how the estate was being used, and they asked whether we could help them, whether we could do utilisation studies, whether we could install sensors and provide ongoing utilisation and occupancy data. That is how Open Space evolved into a full space management tool, where we help to understand, manage and then optimise the estate, not just for NHS Property Services, but for the whole of the NHS.

The Community Health Partnership is one of 
those examples. They had their own booking system, called TAP, which was coming to the end of its life. 
We have always tried to work closely with Community Health Partnerships in what we do, and this was one of those situations where they came to us and said, “Our booking system is coming to end of life. We like the look of yours. Could we work together, could we collaborate, and is there an opportunity for us to use your system?” That is exactly why we built Open Space.

We wanted to create a single platform where, for example, a service looking for space in one area would not just see NHS Property Services properties, but could also see Community Health Partnerships properties and local Trust properties, all in one place, and choose the space they want to use.

We therefore ended up running a pilot with Community Health Partnerships across 18 sites in two ICB locations for six months. When you look at the outcomes, the first thing I would say is that it was brilliant to see someone else using the system and getting the same benefits that we get out of it. That is why we built this and why we invested in it as a company — to deliver something that provides a real, tangible benefit to the system and can then be adopted and used more widely.

The fact that the metrics were so strong was fantastic, because it led to Community Health Partnerships signing a five-year contract with us to adopt Open Space. If I had to choose one particularly encouraging metric, it would be the fact that around 22% of bookings during the pilot were from new users.

For me, that was really important because one of the main reasons we are doing this is to help deliver a more optimised estate. The more optimised the estate is, the more services are using it, and the more services that are using it, the more services are being delivered to patients. That is why that figure stood out to me, because it showed that more services were being delivered locally.

Was there anything that was adjusted or removed from the pilot that was redundant?

Not really, because Open Space itself was refined during an earlier two-year pilot between 2017 and 2019. We wanted to make our mistakes on our own estate before offering it externally.

However, we did improve how we worked with the community health partnership, particularly around communications, training materials and collaboration as a joint project team.

There were some improvements that we bought in with our communications with customers, and some of the literature that we provide for them in the training just to make things a bit more explicit.

In terms of training, can you tell me how long the training takes to do, and how do you deliver the training? Online — in person? How does it work?

Yes, we provide a whole range of online training sessions, recorded sessions, training manuals and have a helpdesk. We also have experts in my team who are always on hand if anyone needs support or wants something explained. There is a full set of resources to help people understand how to use the system.

A wider question around the 10 Year Health Plan and the drive towards digitisation, how do you see digital tools like NHS Open Space fitting into that?

I see Open Space as a fantastic opportunity to help to help enable the 10 year health plan.

It directly supports all three shifts in the plan. It enables hospital to community by allowing services to deliver care in community settings without needing permanent space. It supports analogue to digital through sensors, dashboards and digital booking. It also supports prevention, because we actively encourage charities to use the space.

Last year alone, we provided 220,000 hours of space to charities, which directly supports that prevention agenda.

Open Space was recently given a Highly Commended Award at the Property Week Awards?

It was really fantastic to see. It’s amazing that the platform is receiving recognition not only within the healthcare sector, but also within the wider property industry. That is a huge validation of the work we have done.

With regards to other technologies or digital solutions, I think there is a huge amount of potential for the NHS to benefit from innovation. Proptech has been around for a while, and there are many systems and solutions available that could help improve estate management and service delivery across the NHS. For Open Space in particular, one of our key focuses is how we can continue to innovate, especially around encouraging collaboration within the system and enabling decision-making at a system level.

By “system level,” I mean not just bringing NHS Property Services and Community Health Partnerships together, but also involving Integrated Care Boards, NHS Trusts, and other stakeholders within an ICB region. The idea is to move away from managing the estate as separate pockets owned by different estate leaders or landlords and instead to bring all of it together.

One of the projects we are currently working on with South East London Integrated Care Board and Community Health Partnerships is combining utilisation data into a single dashboard. This dashboard overlays property and utilisation data, allowing us to see trends across all estate types — NHS Property Services properties, Community Health Partnerships properties, and local Trust properties — in one place.

To give an example, within our own estate, we have deployed around 4,900 sensor units through Open Space. Our average utilisation rate currently sits at 
about 35.2%, meaning just over a third of the time the space is actively being used. Often, people perceive that space is fully utilised, but in reality, it is sitting empty. By providing this information, we can open up opportunities to reduce costs, create value, and right-size the estate. This is just one example of how proptech can have a significant impact. I think this kind of work will have huge benefits across the NHS, beyond what we are doing internally within NHS Property Services. Innovation and proptech allow us to explore smarter buildings and smarter use of space, and that is an area we continue to focus on.

With sustainability and Net Zero such a priority, do you see platforms like NHS Open Space helping reduce the carbon footprint of the NHS estate?

Yes, absolutely. One of the key areas we are exploring is how we can use smart technology to make buildings more efficient and, in doing so, support the NHS in achieving Net Zero targets. NHS Property Services has a Green Plan, and we want to reach Net Zero by 2040. To achieve that, we need to look at how to make our buildings more efficient.

There are already trials in place using technology to manage building systems more effectively. For example, we are using smart sensors and building management systems to optimise heating, lighting, and even water testing. By overlaying occupancy data with building usage, we can identify areas where energy can be reduced. For instance, if a part of a hospital is known to be unoccupied at certain times, heating can be reduced or turned off, which can lead to significant energy savings. Platforms like Open Space give us the data and tools to make those decisions more accurately, and I think this is a clear way in which proptech can support the NHS’s Net Zero ambitions.

It’s great to hear someone be so positive about how technology can help the NHS achieve future sustainability goals. What’s your vision for how the NHS estate could feel different for patients and staff because of better space management?

For me, space management is an enabler of wider change, particularly in line with the 10 Year health Plan and the move towards neighbourhood health centres. My vision is for the NHS estate to be right-sized, leaner, more efficient, and truly fit for purpose. That means creating spaces that are well utilised, enabling services to be delivered more effectively, and ultimately improving patient experience.

The ultimate goal is to show how the estate is being used, so that the wider NHS can understand usage patterns and make strategic decisions. NHS Property Services can then help right-size the estate to ensure services are delivered in the most efficient way possible. Open Space contributes to this by making space flexible, so that more services can operate within it. For me, this is about creating tangible benefits for patients: better access to services, a more comfortable environment for staff, and a smarter, more efficient estate overall. This vision drives why I do this work — to ensure the estate actively supports the delivery of care.

What’s next for Open Space and NHS Property Services?

We now have a product that has been stress-tested and proven to work. CHP is our first major adopter, and the next step is to make sure the wider system knows it is here and can start using it. We built Open Space because we believe it can genuinely help the NHS, and now we want people to come and benefit from it.