Context
Imperial College London is a world-renowned university with a strong focus on science, engineering, medicine, and business. The institution operates across multiple campuses in London, with a diverse range of facilities including laboratories, lecture halls, student accommodations, and administrative buildings. With thousands of staff and students, ensuring robust property risk management is critical to maintaining safety and operational efficiency.
Whilst the university has its own internal resources for risk management, the recently appointed Chief Operating Officer, Robert Kerse, approached us to gain an independent view on the current status of property risk management. As specialists in health and safety support for colleges and universities, Vita Safety was engaged to provide an independent view aimed to verify the adequacy of current controls, whilst setting a strategy to close any gaps and continually improve.
Task
From the outset, it was clear that this would be a fully collaborative project. Imperial already has skilled property management and risk experts in place. Our role was to gain an insight into the challenges posed with these teams to ensure the recommendations were tailored to the institution’s unique needs.
To allow a clear road map for project completion, the work was carried out in two distinct phases:
- Phase 1 – Discovery and fact finding;
- Phase 2 – Site-based risk evaluation, data correlation and reporting.
The review aimed to identify areas requiring support, specific to the risk topics, highlight areas of good practice, and fostering greater transparency for property risk management across differing levels of the organisation.
Solutions
Our team of consultants, led by Khurram Fiaz, worked closely with Imperial’s property management team to understand their systems, processes, and how property risk management was integrated into the institution’s operations in Phase 1.
This involved confirming the project team and resources, scheduling regular steering meetings, and reviewing organisation charts and policies to map personnel involvement with specific project goals. The property portfolio was categorised by premises type, and review areas were agreed covering risk, policies, procedures, and organisational structure.
Following Phase 1, a site-based risk evaluation was undertaken in Phase 2, aimed at gathering the necessary information to form an opinion on property risk. This involved a programme of health and safety audits across a sample of the property portfolio, including; academic departments, residential and third party controlled buildings. Auditing involved assessing the arrangements of each individual building’s agreed premises risk topics against legal compliance, internal policy and procedures, and good practices.
Given the complexity and scale of Imperial’s operations, it was essential to assess the connections between campuses, departments and contractors from a property risk management perspective.
Our review also embodied evaluating the status of planned preventative maintenance, both internal and external, across the estate.
Results
“For us, it was about building a partnership with an independent expert to help Imperial identify areas of best practice and opportunities for improvement in property risk management to ensure the safety of our students, staff, visitors and contractors”.
Robert Kerse, Chief Operating Officer
As part of Phase 2 of the project, following the site-based risk evaluation, a management report was produced. The report highlighted some of the good practices the institution has in place such as a comprehensive health and safety management system and internal codes of practices. Additionally, findings from the audits and documentation indicated Imperial is performing well for compliance related to the premises risk topics. Areas which require some support were also noted in the report, including the need for targeted training on the recently implemented planned preventative maintenance system for managers to enhance their overview of completed tasks, and a greater overview on the completion of remedial actions.
The main outcome was a trusted partnership and the assurance we provided in the agreed premises risk topics. This has allowed the respective teams to allocate resource into areas which require some support whilst recognising the areas of property risk which are being managed well.
“I welcomed the collaborative engagement from Vita Safety. It reassured me as a Deputy Chief Property Officer responsible for property risk management and highlighted both the areas we excelled in and those requiring further development.”
Jane Hay, Deputy Chief Property Officer
Looking ahead
“At Imperial, we aim to cultivate a proactive risk management culture where everyone feels empowered to raise concerns and contribute ideas without hesitation. Our open partnering approach adopted with the support from Vita Safety demonstrated this desire for continual improvement”.
Robert Kerse, Chief Operating Officer.
