Imperial: A Vita Safety Case Study

Vita Safety supported Imperial College London in strengthening property risk management across its campuses.

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. Our 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.

Read more…https://www.vitasafety.com/case-studies/imperial-college-london/