NHS Property Services transforms estate operations with low-code innovation and AI-powered automation built on Microsoft Power Platform

NHS Property Services (NHSPS) is responsible for maintaining approximately 3,000 properties for NHS, one of the largest healthcare networks in the world. More than 5,500 employees at NHSPS provide a wide range of estate management services – from technical maintenance and cleaning, to leasing and property development. Together, NHSPS employees play a vital role in keeping NHS facilities safe, compliant, and fit for the future.

To provide the best service possible across a vast network of properties, NHSPS has embraced a digitally enabled and data driven culture. The government-owned organization has also recognized the need to balance technical innovation with tight budget constraints. 

These priorities led NHSPS to adopt Power Platform. “We quickly discovered that, with Power Platform, we could empower our own employees to build high-performing solutions faster and more cost-effectively than with external providers or off-the-shelf systems,” says Wayne Appleby, Software Engineering Manager at NHSPS. 

Today, the NHSPS citizen developer community comprises 115 active makers, all adhering to best practice guidelines to ensure secure and compliant development. Collectively, these makers have created over 300 Power Apps applications and more than 1,000 Power Automate flows, driving automation and efficiency across the organization. In addition to this thriving community, a dedicated team of six senior Power Platform engineers focuses on building complex, mission-critical and enterprise-scale applications while providing guidance and support to citizen developers working on low-code solutions.

Streamlining field operations

Work on Power Platform began at NHSPS with simple Power Apps applications designed to replace manual processes. One of the first projects that made a real impact on the business was an app for tracking annual budget feedback from customers. “We were able to rapidly develop a solution that can collate and analyze information and create tasks in our Dynamics 365 CRM system for the relevant customer contact to act on. This same solution would have taken months with our old development process,” says Appleby.

This app was quickly followed by another success story: a mobile app for scheduling, completing and tracking onsite inspections of work done by cleaning staff at over a thousand NHSPS sites. The app replaced a manual process of paper forms and Excel templates and is now used by more than 400 frontline staff to conduct approximately 800 audits a month.

The system automatically schedules audits and assigns them to the appropriate cleaning supervisors, or “auditors” for each site. The audit is then completed using a mobile app. 

Supporting compliance and safety checks

A similar mobile app was developed to help field engineers carry out compliance and safety checks on boilers, air conditioning systems, and fire doors. These checks include certificates verifying equipment compliance. Previously, certificates were assembled manually. Now, a mobile app guides inspectors through the process. 

A flow in Power Automate creates a PDF e-certificate and emails it to the appropriate compliance mailbox automatically. Once audits are submitted, the results from the app feed into live dashboards and reports via Power BI. Users and managers can view audit scorecards, trends, and KPI reports for each site or region.

Integration with Dataverse provides employees with a built-in offline capability that is invaluable at properties with weak connectivity, especially older buildings or rural locations. All inputs are stored locally and automatically synchronized with Dataverse once connectivity resumes. “The offline capability in Dataverse gave our frontline workers the confidence to use our auditing app without worrying about data loss due to a lost connection. We actually saw adoption increase once users learned about this great feature,” says Paul Kostic, Engineering Manager for Power Platform at NHS Property Services.

The app is now used by over 100 field engineers and has generated more than 6,000 e-certificates, greatly accelerating the certification process for planned maintenance. Also, with near real time reporting of inspections that do not meet the required standard, the app has led to faster turnaround on resolving issues.

Feedback from their colleagues and managers has been excellent. Ashly Harrison, Quality Assurance & Integrated Audit Lead at NHS Property Services says, “Our Cleaning Audit App has been transformational in enabling our teams to audit their properties, capture our performance, and assuring our customers that their properties are clean and safe for patients, staff and visitors. Developed with Power Platform, our audit app is better than most systems from commercial providers that I’ve used in other organisations.” 

Supporting customers with AI-driven innovation 

Engineers at NHSPS have used Power Platform for increasingly advanced projects – including the development of AI-driven agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio. 

One of the most successful agents developed so far has been an agent to support customer service personnel. Every day, the customer service team manages hundreds of calls from property tenants. Questions cover a wide range of issues, from simple repairs to system outages. These calls require fast access to information that helps the team assess the issue and assign the right technical support. 

Previously, OneNote was used to search for this information. Today, the team uses an agent connected to a SharePoint library. A search on OneNote that used to take several minutes can now be done in seconds using natural language queries. What’s more, updates made to files in SharePoint - such as frequent changes to personnel contact information - are immediately accessible by the agent. 

“Colleagues are impressed with how much faster they can access information and how accurate the agent’s responses have been to their specific questions,” says Kostic. Managing stakeholders are already asking for agents to support other teams and parts of the business. 

Looking ahead to the future

NHSPS sees significant opportunities to expand its use of tools like Copilot Studio and the broader Power Platform toolset. 

For example, engineers are looking at deeper integration of agents with the organization’s Dynamics 365 system. The plan is to provide greater support for employees, enabling them to pull up a broad range of customer information more efficiently. 

Another scenario involves an agent that could co-ordinate an engineer’s schedule with the facilities that need service or inspection and plan the most efficient route. Once onsite, the engineer could simply pull up the agent, ask which assets need to be serviced, and provide the required updates in natural language. The agent could then update the central data store, generate reports and create certificates. 

These are clearly exciting times for the Power Platform engineers at NHSPS. As Kostic says, “With Power Platform, we’re able to quickly spin up prototypes and start turning AI concepts into practical applications that NHSPS can start using right away. It’s helping deliver brilliant service and build an NHS estate that’s fit for the future.”

To learn more about NHS Property Services, follow them on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Vimeo.