OCS Emirates wins Abu Dhabi hospital contract

Dubai-based OCS Emirates said it has secured the largest healthcare facilities management (FM) contract in the UAE worth over Dh400 million ($108 million) from Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City (SSMC) in Abu Dhabi. As per the five-and-a-half-year contract, OCS Emirates will provide all the estate and facilities hard services including water system management and plumbing, mechanical/HVAC services, electrical distribution, medical gas pipeline system (MGPS), building fabrics, electronics, fire and life safety systems, building management system (BMS) and bio-medical engineering (BME). The new 300,000-sq-m medical facility, SSMC provides a cost-effective alternative for patients who previously had to seek specialised care overseas. Its specialist area is advanced burn treatment and it is considered to be the first centre in the UAE to provide such a specialty. It will also provide other medical services such as orthopedic and thoracic surgery, cardiac services, endocrinology, head and neck tumours, blood, bones, rheumatism and respiratory diseases as well as urology and nephrology, gastroenterology and cardiovascular. The project includes a three-storey outpatient building, a three-storey podium building, two nine-storey and two eleven-storey inpatient towers with 732-beds, two Presidential suites and 36 VIP suites, said the statement from OSC Emirates. The facilities also include 364 post-surgical inpatients beds, 120 maternal and child health ward beds, 32 Medical ICU beds, 30 Cardiac ICU beds, 24 Surgical ICU beds, 20 Medical Burns Unit beds, 26 Neonatal ICU beds and 18 beds in the labour department. It boasts three main wards, two of which are dedicated for male patients and one for females. It also houses cooling plants, a workshop, mortuary, underground tanks, service tunnels, underground car parking, two helipads and landscaping, said the statement. In total, 125 healthcare technical specialists from OCS Emirates have been deployed to work round-the-clock. This number will move up to 300 over the next 18-month period, it added. Fiona McDonnell, the general manager at OCS Emirates, said: "We were awarded the contract for the buildings assets management and the bio medical engineering equipment in February 2016, with a contract commencement of December 1 2017." "We are now very much looking forward to the building handover on February 1 2018 of the UAE’s largest healthcare facility. It is a fantastic accolade for OCS and we anticipate future strong growth in this sector," she stated. After an exhaustive tender process, OCS Emirates was selected to deliver the specialised FM work by Seha, the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company, an independent public joint stock company that owns and operates all public hospitals and clinics across the emirate, she added. Explaining the nuances of the healthcare FM specialism McDonnell said: "Understanding how your clinical partners operate is crucial to a successful healthcare project." "This sector is totally unique and you must have the expertise to fulfil your obligations. At the end of the day we are dealing with patients’ lives," she stated. According to her, there are elements such as infection control, following healthcare regulations and compliance with recognised industry standards, that must not only be adhered to, but be delivered expertly. "I myself have been in the healthcare space for 25 years. You simply must have experts who understand healthcare, clinical practices and clinical requirements," she stated. Martin Logue, the managing director, pointed out that strategically this had been a great win for OSC Emirates and it had elevated the profile of the company across the Gulf and the UAE. "Over the course of the next five years we will look to expand our healthcare portfolio as well as have a stronger impact within the aviation sector, across the GCC, based upon the global experience of OCS," noted Logue. "We currently work with over 50 airlines in over 20 airports worldwide, including the management of over 500,000 aircrafts per year. With 50 years in aviation and $160 million revenue in aviation in 2017, we expect this to be the next big area of growth for us,"