Innes England starts work on major care homes revamp

LEADING East Midlands commercial property firm Innes England has secured a major refurbishment project with the UK’s largest charity care provider Methodist Homes (MHA). 

The company’s building consultancy department, headed by director Mike Thorne, is working on the initial stages of the programme, handling the design, project management and full refurbishment of several priority homes. It is part of MHA’s wider plan to breathe new life into its care home services.

The appointment to the 12-month scheme marks an impressive win for the growing Innes England building consultancy team. Its one-stop shop service involves overseeing the full process, including preparing specifications and drawings for tendering, defining roles and responsibilities, communication and reporting, programming, risk management, health and safety as well as time, cost and quality control. 

Mike said: “Securing this project win is a great achievement for our talented team. As well as having a relationship with MHA, having worked on previous projects, we were able to demonstrate our breadth of resources to them, which proved successful even against some much larger competition. 

“The refurbishment project will involve many members of our team, and I am looking forward to taking quite a hands-on approach with regular progress meetings to keep everything on track.” 

MHA, which has its headquarters in Derby, provides high-quality residential, dementia and nursing care homes as well as retirement living accommodation and community-based services across England, Scotland, and Wales. Founded by members of the Methodist Church in 1943, it supports and cares for more than 19,200 older people, has 6,500 staff and more than 3,200 volunteers at its 88 care homes, 70 retirement living communities and 50 MHA Communities hubs. 

Mike added: “There are challenging aspects to the work, which will encompass a range of residential accommodation, from care homes with individual en-suite rooms to properties with one-bedroom flats and a shared communal area, so a great deal of work is needed in logistics planning.

“All the sites are occupied by residents, so as well as needing to consider issues around Covid, it is important that any disruption to them and the staff is minimised. Some residents are living with dementia, for example.

“But with everything MHA’s teams have overcome through the pandemic in the past two years, it will be great to deliver for their business as well as make a difference to the lives of the people it cares for.”   

Innes England’s surveyors have dealt with similar large-scale residential refurbishments and redecorations before, running several projects simultaneously and within strict timescales for the University of Leicester.

MHA’s director of property, Andrew White, said: “We are very pleased to have appointed Innes England to help us with this major refurbishment project, which is part of a wider programme of works taking place. As part of our aim to provide the highest possible quality of care for our residents, we need to make sure the environment they live in is the best it can be.

“Mike and his team’s understanding of what we want to achieve and the solutions and level of care involved were key to us choosing them for this important work. The experience and skills they will bring will play a significant part in this next stage of MHA’s development.”

Innes England’s building consultancy team specialises in design, specification and project management, providing dilapidations advice and development monitoring services for both public and private sector clients.

Find out more at http://www.innes-england.com or join the conversation at @InnesEngland.