Les Cook has spent his entire working life in healthcare and hospitals – he even played in a band called Medical as Anything.
It’s been a huge departure from a life working on the family farm he had originally planned more than 40 years ago.
Les has worked for Building Engineering and Maintenance Services (BEMS) in Mackay since August 2019 coming from a similar role at the Forensic and Scientific Services at Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee (QEII) Hospital in Brisbane.
The Mackay Hospital and Health Service maintenance planner is responsible for developing planning strategies and scheduling, co-ordinating and monitoring the maintenance of all plant equipment across six hospitals, two multi-purpose healthcare facilities and four community health centres includes sites in Moranbah, Bowen, Proserpine, Clermont and Sarina.
The maintenance planner role has him coordinating and monitoring the maintenance undertaken on all plant equipment across MHHS sites, capturing asset data at new sites like Sarina and Moranbah and creating preventative maintenance schedules to ensure both generic and statutory legislative compliance.
“Preventative plans for plant maintenance reduce the risk of breakdown of things like air condition and increase plant lifespan, but an important part of this work is also planning for corrective and follow up maintenance,” Les said.
It’s a role which requires a high degree of decision-making and problem-solving skills and involved continual reprioritisation.
“In this role you need to keep a cool head, be adaptable and react well under pressure. Sometimes there’s not a simple fix, sometimes issues can be very complex. It involves a lot of collaboration with staff and contractors so you need to always be positive and polite.”
Les was born on a 300-acre dairy farm in Lismore and had planned to work on the family’s farm growing tomatoes and zucchini. When the share-cropping partnership ended suddenly when he was 17, he applied for a position at Tweed Heads hospital in the late 1970sas a surgical dresser.
“I was shaving patients pre-ops and training as a surgical dresser but I also assisted with post-mortems. I wasn’t really comfortable with that and only lasted a year,” he said.
“I did really like the hospital environment though – it was a welcome reprieve compared to the hard yakka of working on the family farm.”
He began his career with Queensland Health in 1980 as an operating theatre technician at QEII Jubilee Hospital in Brisbane which saw him preparing equipment and fittings for operating tables ahead of surgery.
“One of the important jobs was positioning the theatre lights – there were no scopes in those days so lighting for surgery, particularly when making open incisions for operations like gall bladder removal, was vital.”
After 16 years, he applied to the QEII maintenance department to work as a trade assistant in the 350-bed hospital.
“Growing up on a farm, I always had a natural ability with repairs and maintenance – my superiors at the time noticed this which led to my first role in the maintenance planning area as a trade assistant in 1998,” he said.
“My manager then noticed I had sound ability with software and computers and asked if I wanted to do a maintenance planner course. I spent the next 32 years there at the QEII and knew every nook and cranny of that site.”
Les even met his wife in theatre at the hospital. She still works at QEII as an anaesthetic technician in Brisbane while he is based in Mackay. He travels home as often as possible, but as a passionate runner, it was the lure of lush rainforests and golden beaches which led him to apply for the position in Mackay five years ago.
“The BEMS team are awesome too, particularly their ability to adapt and react under sometimes high pressure. They are a very high performing team,” he said.
The maintenance of plant and equipment is absolutely vital and Les describes hospitals are “just like a human body”.
“And BEMS really is the heart of it – it feeds out to everything, but it all comes back to us eventually,” he said.
“It’s really very rewarding to know our work here behind the scenes helps contribute to great healthcare outcomes across the region.”
