UMC Utrecht
Managing a 10-year-long relocation and construction project with Reworc
Introduction
Care, research, and education are the three mainstays of UMC Utrecht. These mainstays are inextricably intertwined in our ongoing efforts to improve people's health. Leading scientific research, groundbreaking innovation, and collaboration with patients and other interested parties form the basis of our first-rate healthcare. UMC Utrecht is quick and eager to put improvements into practice. High-quality education guarantees the influx of new talent required to maintain and strengthen our position at the forefront of healthcare.
As the hospital is on the verge of creating an entirely new real estate portfolio, they used the opportunity to start digitalizing their employees’ needs and buildings to smoothen the relocation and construction process for the coming decade.
The Story of UMC Utrecht
Employees are of overriding importance to UMC Utrecht. Consequently eager for talented individuals to make a conscious decision to join UMC Utrecht to prepare talented people for the future. Interaction with patients and the society we belong to is crucial in this respect. Employees are therefore selected and coached on the basis of the competencies required to achieve this. They provide outstanding, forward-thinking education and an environment in which students and employees can continue to develop their knowledge and skills while feeling free to try out new methods and approaches. We aim to be the forerunner in this respect by acting in a sustainable and socially responsible manner.
The Challenge
UMC Utrecht wants to be an organization where colleagues are heard and valued. Because everyone's voice counts and thanks to inspiring leadership. A work environment employees are proud to talk about.
In collaboration with partners from the Utrecht Science Park, and the state and local government, UMC Utrecht is building an environment that moves along with their ambitions and the care of tomorrow. The Health Campus is aimed at a healthy lifestyle in which the body is given the opportunity to recover itself.
In an organization with more than 6000 employees, it is difficult to involve everyone in a conventional way. In addition, it is a major challenge that renovations and buildings will be phased over a time frame of 10 years, which means that temporary changes will take place over a period of a decade.
Why Reworc
When the decision was made to start this process it was the middle of a Covid-pandemic. It was not yet known how this would impact the way of working but the fact that it was going to evolve was a given fact. So in order to manage 10 years of temporary housing, creating a new workplace concept while knowing in advance, will be a model that is going to be changed and tweaked every year until the hospital finds the definitive new way of working.
In order to facilitate collaboration in this process and maintain flexibility to be able to continuously adapt the environment to the needs of the employees, The UMC needed a software platform. Using excel sheets and a combination of multiple versions of pdf and excel files will without a doubt make for a slow and error-prone workflow and therefore Reworc was chosen to facilitate the above. Next to digitalizing work, Reworc easily allows for crowd-based information and thus evidence-based design.
How Reworc responded
When we first were approached by UMC Utrecht, we discovered how diverse the users of spaces within the hospital are. Because employee engagement is a central focus point, we created four different types of digital interviews. This way, we can speak to each of the different users (E.g., scientists in labs, nurses, office workers, etc.) in their own tone of voice, therefore, getting a higher response rate and creating an actual data-driven analytics dashboard representing the DNA of the employees at UMC Utrecht.
Furthermore, Reworc assists in creating digital twins of their real estate portfolio. Enabling facility and real estate managers to test fit multiple scenarios in seconds.
Reworc easily allows for crowdbased information and thus data-driven design
The Results
In year one of the approximately 10-year project, we already see the positive results of using the Reworc platform. Analyzing most of the employees at least once gives the platform the data to enable future scenario modeling. Knowing what activities are done in what quantity and with whom. This, combined with an adjacency study mapping important work relations between all employees, gives management the insights needed to seamlessly fit groups of people into temporary housing without losing touch with their colleagues and thus productivity. Reworc’s insights ensured that all attending employees had the suitable spaces to fulfill their tasks.
