Teamwork at its best

In a big organisation it’s often difficult to understand what every team does. The transformation of the Training Facilities at Longwater depot gave Jon Proctor, LOM, a real insight into the world of IT and the support they could give him in his role.

Longwater recently underwent a very large building project to allow more space and facilities, in order to move over to the full, make ready capability and to increase and modernise the office and training areas. The upgrade included the creation of a new training room, three offices and a meeting/breakout room.

Jon Proctor, LOM for Longwater, said: ‘This was the first building project that I had led on as a local manager and many of the processes were new to me, the main one being how to ensure our new spaces had the appropriate IT infrastructure in place.

‘Lack of knowledge on my part was an issue as I saw many shiny new computer points around the room and wrongly assumed that this would mean they all connected to the main server. IT came to the rescue and uncovered that the problem was we had plenty of sockets, but not enough connections, which they quickly resolved for us.

‘The next challenge was the need for new IT equipment, so that our training facilities were the best possible for our trainers. Because this was a new facility we agreed locally that the best option was a smart white board, but it became clear that the overall cost was just too great. Enter stage left, the IT team who were able to offer a great solution and reposition the boards from Newmarket training centre. Thanks to them, we now have the gold standard training room kit, at no additional cost to the organisation.’

‘It was a fantastic outcome and proves that if you get the specialists on board and are willing to listen to their advice then you get great results. I’m so glad I’ve been through this process as  I’ve learnt that the IT team do far more than fix my laptop when I break it. They have been really proactive and helpful in making Longwater a first class training facility, which will allow our clinicians to receive high quality training, directly benefitting our patients.’

Steve Murphy, IM&T Business Relationship manager, said, ‘It’s been great to create a training space at Longwater which will give our colleagues the best experience possible. The best bit is that by re-deploying existing kit, the team still have the latest technology, without the expense. The state-of-the-art screens were no longer needed due to the closure of Newmarket and re-cycling them rather than purchasing from new, means we’ve saved the Trust in the region of £30,000. The third Newmarket whiteboard is going to be used by Operations in a new training and ECAT overflow room at Bedford AOC’

Published 13th October 2021