ORGANISATION

OSI Araba, People Management.

CHALLENGE

The overall challenge of the project is how we want the Maintenance Service of the 21st century to be like in OSI Araba.

IMPROBABLE COLLABORATOR

Carles Gispert, artist and cultural activist, has developed collaborative projects in public spaces in social or artistic areas. Involved in innovation, educational and participatory processes through culture, he is co-founder of AATOMIC LAB and Lacasadelcactus in Mallorca. The process had the collaboration of Paco Espinosa, artist and member of the collective AATOMIC LAB.

AGENTS

The project was carried out with a Steering Group (comprising people from the Maintenance Service of OSI Araba), a Broad Group (comprising OSI Araba workers from various departments, categories and levels) and a Working Group that participated in the Creative Pill.

PROCESS

The process began with two work Steering Group sessions. These analysed the current situation and an attempt was made to identify the future needs of OSI Araba with regard to its Maintenance Service, given that in the coming years it is going to experience a significant increase in the number of buildings and a remodelling of the services offered to the users of the Basque Autonomous Community Health Service (Osakidetza). All this was defined in three specific challenges that were later prioritised by the Broad Group in order to work on a Creative Pill. The Pill was conducted with people who volunteered for the Broad Group, which meant that there was a good diversity of people based on the type of work they do, health departments, levels of responsibility, age and gender.

The Creative Pill is being carried out in four sessions (an initial session of methodology and three of co-creation with the Improbable Collaborator). The aim is to identify solutions to a specific challenge: how to build a system that allows for the analysis and detection of training needs in the Maintenance Service so that the workers can become certified and accredited through adequate, effective and efficient training, thereby helping to improve the service.

The COVID-19 pandemic broke out as work was underway on the Creative Pill and its most urgent consequences, at least in the initial phase, were experienced by the health sector, which includes the Maintenance Service. The initial challenge of defining OSI Araba’s Maintenance Service to meet the needs of the 21st century was therefore extended to the new needs of addressing not only new hospital infrastructures but also emergency situations, such as a pandemic or health crisis. Within this context of uncertainty that went beyond the local, joint consideration work was conducted and the proposal was to move towards new paradigms that imply changes in the ways of both working and relating or structuring.

The Creative Pill was developed through rapid prototyping processes in order to study difficulties, opposition, alliances and opportunities, primarily focusing on the importance of soft technologies. The result was expressed in five points that are designed to be the beginning of an “unfinished manual” to think about the future of the Maintenance Service and that summarise the recurring elements appearing throughout the entire process:

• Ongoing training to support, improve and enhance the work of the maintenance team.
• Jointly share knowledge, tools and experiences: management, workers and users, as part of collaborative processes.
• Co-create to achieve a good public service that is friendly, effective and efficient.
• Be facilitators rather than experts: collective intelligence and mutual support.
• Incorporate responsible, accessible and collaborative training: adding to technical training and training in shared processes

OSI Araba’s People Management gave the green light to the five projects even though the Broad Group prioritised three of them. They will all be participative in nature, work will be done on them in a crosscutting manner and they will have co-leaders from different areas of the Maintenance Service.