Project · Equipment
A surgical equipment portfolio, held to a standard
Fragmented registers and no uptime commitments — standardised into one service framework across multiple sites.
The brief
A private surgical group operating across several sites held a working but disorderly estate of clinical equipment: arthroscopy towers, surgical tables, lighting and monitoring units acquired at different times, under different arrangements, serviced by different vendors with different response habits. Nothing was broken — but nothing could be relied on either. The group wanted its equipment held by one owner, under one service standard, so that a theatre list at any site could be planned around equipment that was known, not hoped for.
The difficulty
The portfolio's problem was invisibility. Asset records were inconsistent between sites, so no one could say with confidence which units were approaching end of service life, which service contracts lapsed when, or what the group's true maintenance exposure was. Each site had its own vendor relationships, its own response times and its own escalation habits — meaning a Monday-morning failure produced three different experiences depending on where it happened. And because no single party owned the lifecycle, replacement decisions were being made one budget at a time, with no forward plan that a clinical roster could trust.
What we did
We started where every equipment discipline should: the register. Every unit across every site was audited, tagged and recorded — make, model, age, utilisation, service history and realistic remaining service life. On that foundation we built a single service framework: one maintenance calendar across all sites, one set of defined response times, and one escalation number for the group's theatre managers. Preventive schedules were rebuilt around each site's theatre lists, so servicing happened in the calendar's quiet hours rather than in the middle of a clinical day.
Lifecycle planning came next: replacement and major-refurbishment dates were set for each asset class and funded on a forward capital plan, replacing the drift of one-off budget decisions. Where a unit's service life was genuinely short, a structured end-of-term pathway was agreed with the group in advance — upgrade, replacement or return — so no site ever faced a surprise.
The outcome
The group's theatre managers gained equipment they could plan around. Service response became predictable at every site; maintenance moved from reactive to preventive; and the forward replacement plan gave the group's rostering and procurement teams a horizon they could use. The portfolio has been held and managed by us since, with the register maintained continuously.
From the other side of the program
One register, one number, one standard across three sites. My Mondays start differently now.
Theatre Services Manager — Private Hospital Group, VictoriaThis program is the practice of our equipment investment discipline. Read the next project, specialist suites development, or talk to us about your equipment estate.