Work differently - get results!

Public Health Wales NHS Trust won the Value category at the 2017 CEW Awards and demonstrated that by working differently with smaller, local businesses – including social enterprise – high quality results can be achieved.

In 2016 Public Health Wales NHS Trust relocated 550+ professional, technical and administrative staff from nine offices in South East Wales to a new build in a regeneration zone in Cardiff. This project has raised the bar for public sector building refurbishment projects and it won the Value category at the 2017 CEW Awards

It has demonstrated that by working differently with smaller, local businesses – including social enterprise – high quality results can be achieved. It shows that existing procurement processes can work if effort is applied and it provides a large scale visual reminder of what ordinary folk can achieve!

Visitors to the building who see the results and hear the story are blown away and are sufficiently 'infected' to apply this locally.
This blend of storytelling with numbers could be rolled out further and it is now your opportunity – on 2 February – to view the premises and hear all about the project from the team who were last year's Value category winners at the CEW Awards.
Back in 2016 Public Health Wales (PHW) seized the opportunity to use the fit-out as an intriguing demonstration of how to maximise value from investment in office accommodation. At a time of austerity, with public bodies like the NHS needing to make the most of every penny, the fit-out project revealed an innovative new approach to procurement that challenges traditional sourcing methods. The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act requires organisations to improve the social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing of Wales by thinking long term and working with people and communities in a more joined-up way. Recognising that insistence on lowest cost furniture and equipment too often results in poor quality, poor ergonomics and short lifetimes, PHW's solution was practical, sustainable, supportive of social enterprise and a direct challenge to the throwaway society. It's a great example of putting principle into practice. PHW formed a consortium, bringing together design company Rype Office, office furniture manufacturer Orangebox and Greenstream Flooring to source furniture and equipment that was either second-hand or could be reused through cleaning, repairing or reupholstering. This not only opened up new employment opportunities, it prevented the items from going to landfill. Rype Office organised the remanufacturing of items on site by a team drawn from long-term unemployed people in South Wales. Orangebox provided 550 remanufactured task chairs, while Greenstream Flooring, a community interest company, provided new and reused carpet tiles, again using the labour of low-income and long-term unemployed people. During the refit, 1,143 individual items were reused, ranging from chairs, flooring, office pedestals, storage cabinets and sofas to whiteboards and coat stands. Of all the items used for the refit, 45% were reused and 49% remade, with just 6% sourced from new stock – all from local manufacturers. The sustainability benefits were as dramatic as the social and financial positives, with around 134 tonnes of CO2 saved and 41 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill. Dr Andy Rees, the Welsh Government's head of waste and resource efficiency, remarked that 'Public Health Wales are a fantastic example of circular economy contribution.' The judges appreciated the passion behind PHW's successful efforts to achieve its primary objectives and welcomed the way the learning is being taken forward into other projects.

The learn more about this project come along to the event on Friday 2nd February, full details can be found here.