My Job – Andrew Price

Andrew Price

Andrew Price, Head of Estates SJUH, has worked for the Trust for nearly 15 years.

Summarise the main aspects of your role?

My principal role is to manage and provide leadership to the Engineering teams at SJUH and the Peripheral hospitals ensuring that all the Statutory and reactive maintenance is carried out correctly to support patient care. We carry out a wide variety of different works from straightforward tasks such as changing a tap washer to ensuring complex control systems are functioning correctly. The work the teams and contractors do is both diverse, challenging yet can be extremely rewarding. I have a real responsibility to ensure that we provide a safe environment for patients and staff alike. I have a financial responsibility to ensure we invest and spend Public money correctly and wisely for the benefit of both the Estate and patients along with a duty of care for my teams ensuring in these difficult times that their health and well-being is prioritised and to the forefront of what we do.

What else have you done in your career so far?

My career at LTHT began in 2005 after a 17 year career in the HM Forces where I was given the opportunity as an Estates Manager at the LGI. This was a fantastic role where I could utilise the experience I had already gained and have the opportunity to learn and develop and begin a new chapter in another field. I have been given the opportunity to support my learning by completing role specific courses and successfully completed a degree course. This part of my journey established the foundations for promotion and in 2011 I moved to SJUH as the Senior Engineer. This role came with added responsibility and more learning opportunities in different Estates disciplines. Following an Estates re-structure I was once again promoted into my current role as Head of Estates(SJUH & Peripherals). Here the challenge was to build a new team, focus on our objectives and learning and really be the best that we can to support patient care.

What’s the best thing about your job?

The best things about my job are the success stories. This is twofold really the actual Estates works that directly impact upon patient care, such as the Oxygen upgrade works or the works in support of the Harrogate Nightingale hospital or breakdowns resolved. Secondly the individual personal successes where elements of the team have worked hard to learn and better themselves and have consequently been promoted and recognised for the work and effort that they put in to forge a career in the NHS.

What is the one thing you would change at LTHT to help you do your job better?

I think sometimes it is easy to criticise or pass judgement, for me sometimes I would like the “tools” and flexibility to do the job more effectively. It is obvious that in my tenure at the Trust things have really moved forward in terms of how we work but I feel we do need to embrace the new technologies, better ways of working and really improve the IT systems and procedures that we have to eliminate waste.

What’s your best advice to a new starter at the Trust?

Be open minded, honest and really seek to make a difference by embracing the opportunities that will undoubtedly come your way. Be pro-active, have a hunger to learn, challenge the “norm” and work on building relationships within the teams and different areas and remember ultimately what you do directly affects the patients that walk through the door. Always give of your best as you would expect others to do if your “loved ones” walked through the door.