How CARL Source CMMS revolutionized equipment management at Ensemble Hospitalier de la Côte

The Ensemble Hospitalier de la Côte (EHC) groups together, from Gilly to Crissier and from the shores of Lake Geneva to the foot of the Jura mountains, 1 acute care hospital and 2 rehabilitation centers, 1 private clinic, 3 outpatient clinics, over 20 medical centers and 3 long-stay nursing homes. To maintain the wide range of buildings and equipment, the infrastructure, technical and hotel services departments use the CMMS software CARL Source.

CMMS at EHC, a project structuring maintenance performance

The CMMS project was launched in 2015, with a focus on the quality and reliability of maintenance for EHC’s 30,000 items of equipment and premises. An ambitious specification with specific functional requirements unique to the various departments integrates health and regulatory requirements and CMMS indicators essential for measuring maintenance performance at EHC. CARL Berger-Levrault won the tender. CARL Berger-Levrault’s offer met all the technical, IT and financial criteria, as well as EHC’s requirements for mobile CMMS.

The objectives of the project were thus set:

Manage projects and optimize resources,

Read and manage the financial situation,

Provide each audience (managers, technicians, general management) with the indicators they need.

The Côte hospital complex, its sites, its professions…

CMMS project management in stages

“The first step before deploying the software was to establish a maintenance strategy for all EHC departments,” comments Ignacio Rodicio, Director of the Infrastructure Department, and Eric Jaquenoud, Maintenance Manager. “We’re going back up the thread of ‘symptoms, causes, roots and remedies’, and we’re defining a common vocabulary in the tree structures of our CMMS so that everyone can find their way around,” explains the latter. Harmonized maintenance methods, rigorous reporting and relentless statistics: the benefits of a common CMMS to optimize the quality of maintenance management are quickly measurable.

“Data integration for the first site took a year,” says Ignacio. “It took another year to integrate the second site, with observation, corrections and time for the technicians to get to grips with the CARL Source tool and the CARL Touch mobile CMMS”, before moving on to the Morges site. In 2022, the complete inventory will be completed for the technical and biomedical parts, but not yet for the housekeeping (furniture, linen room, hotel services, etc.).

«The CARL tool gives us an extraordinary color palette. We used shades of gray, but depending on the energy we put into it, we can make a pretty picture.»

Eric Jacquenoud, Maintenance Manager

CMMS as a tool for continuous process improvement and team involvement

“Thanks to the CMMS and the criteria we’ve put in place, we’re able to monitor the quality of our equipment,” says Eric Jaquenoud. “Although the project is taking much longer than expected, the software is working well. According to him, “the standardization of processes across the various sites and the modernization of maintenance practices enhance the value of the technician, and improve loyalty and the integration of new recruits thanks to mobility”.

CARL Source is an invaluable tool in the event of an audit by the health authorities. “During the last two visits”, says Ignacio Rodicio, “the quality of our processes and the historical data available to us earned us only a few minor non-conformities. They welcomed and encouraged the approach taken as part of the CMMS project”.

After having carried out this highly ambitious project using a classic “V-cycle” project management methodology, the project team chose to modify their approach: “we finalized the integration of the first two sites, then switched to the “agile” method, which enables us to break the project down into sub-projects and achieve success more quickly”.

Our equipment maintenance solution for the healthcare sector: CARL Source Healthcare

CARL Source Healthcare is a CMMS solution dedicated to the management of biomedical equipment, buildings and technical equipment in hospitals. Designed in partnership with major players in the field, CARL’s tools help you to meet the new constraints of the healthcare world. They enable you to guarantee the availability of your equipment and the safety of your staff and patients, meet your legal obligations, monitor your contracts and manage your hospital maintenance activities in real time, while reconciling quality and budgetary control.