Frontline Heroes

Estates and Facilities – Our Response To The Pandemic!

Due to the pandemic, the University of Huddersfield closed on 20th March 2020 with all staff working from home apart from Estates and Facilities. Our frontline staff returned to campus to physically close-down buildings and make them safe and secure, and many remained to perform essential duties, including increased security patrols, daily legionella flushing, maintenance checks and fire safety. We undertook a huge procurement task of sourcing PPE and daily check point cleaning. All our processes changed, sometimes daily, to respond to the ever-changing guidance from the Government as the World learnt more about Covid-19.

The Cleaning Services team carried out the essential task of ensuring the campus was clean and safe through ongoing daily cleaning as well as a detailed programme of regular touchpoint cleaning throughout each day.
The additional activity was partly made possible through staff temporarily redeployed from other departments such as Catering Services, to support the work of the team.

Catering Services made changes to how they ran their outlets, they launched their new pre-order Huddersfood app so your coffee or pizza can be ready and waiting for you when you get to Student Central.

The Property Services team has been extremely busy working with Schools and Services and colleagues in Health, Safety and Compliance to ensure we remain a COVID Secure campus environment. This involved the enormous task of reviewing every risk assessment, designing all of the circulation routes, classroom layouts and locations for hand sanitisers in every building to ensure they met all of the control measures, as well as arranging for vast array of signage on campus to be designed, produced and installed.

Campus Support created socially distanced teaching spaces, laying them out to the agreed plans and removing furniture from communal seating areas on campus – to date they have filled 10 containers with the surplus furniture. The team also supported cleaning services by carrying out electrostatic spraying of long-lasting antiviral disinfectant in areas such as computer labs, specialist spaces and the library. Plus supporting Student Services and the Students’ Union in the distribution of care packages to student accommodation and continuing to ensure our campus grounds look neat and tidy.

The Combined Services Group team continued to carry out emergency and reactive repair work, planned maintenance works and any minor building repairs on campus. The team also had the task of fitting all of the additional hand sanitiser and hand towel dispensers and carried out a programme of replacing lighting with more energy efficient equipment, completing annual boiler services and undertaking full electrical inspections of fire alarms, lifts and backup generators on a weekly basis and daily checks of the 30+ plant rooms which keep all of our buildings operational.

Our Security Services team provided 24/7 campus patrols and CCTV surveillance as well as managing access requirements and provided that single point of contact at the main reception throughout the lockdown, including when the campus was closed. They have reviewed security provision, upgraded alarms and CCTV systems and assisted with parking.

And of course, all the staff in all of our services have been supported by our IT, Procurement, Stores, Helpdesk and Admin staff, the oil that keeps this Estates and Facilities team operating so efficiently.