We interviewed SFG20’s Paul Bullard to get his insights into some of the considerations and challenges that currently confront those engaged in facilities management for schools.
Government guidance
Q. Is there anything in the DfE’s Education Estates Strategy that sets it apart from previous interventions and initiatives in this area?
A. In this instance, it’s a strategy focused on providing greater visibility for leadership teams and governing bodies.
Previously, school estates and buildings have tended to be viewed as a background operational issue – things that are simply there until something fails, and you have to deal with them. The DfE now seems to be saying much more clearly that responsible bodies need accurate information, an asset management plan and a more proactive approach to maintenance.
It’s possible at the moment to visit some schools and discover that they don’t necessarily have all the information regarding the assets they have, or what condition they’re in. But if you’re spending money on having people service your facilities, your starting point has to be knowing what needs to be maintained.
There can be a tendency among some to prioritise ‘high-level’ areas – ‘Let’s have our fire equipment inspected,’ ‘Let’s check our heating’ – but what does that actually mean? How many boilers will need servicing? What’s everything connected to?
That’s where the new strategy comes in.
Increased scrutiny
Q. What’s likely to be the most immediate impact of the new guidance on schools’ operations?
There are some parallels between schools and the NHS, in that both have massive maintenance backlogs where things haven’t been dealt with for years.
For schools, the most immediate impact will be increased scrutiny of what they know about their estates. Some currently don’t have that information. However, it would enable them to prioritise the work they require and check whether those decisions are supported by evidence, rather than falling back on the reactive principle of simply fixing things only after they’ve become broken.
The chief priority for schools will always be pupil safety and safeguarding, followed by statutory compliance.
That’s where SFG20 can help, since we can provide guidance as to those things you must do, the things you should do, and the things you could do. We’ll often use the example of a school during winter. If the weather gets especially cold and its boiler fails, the pupils will need to be sent home. So it’s vital that the school keeps its boilers well-maintained throughout the year.
Regulating risk
Q. Your own research recently found that schools are tending to prioritise day-to-day operational spending over planned preventive maintenance. Is that a consequence of statutory regulations steadily expanding over time?
Any public activity that involves regulating risks to personal safety will eventually acquire new laws as time goes on – it’s just what happens. Even with regards to basic facilities management, the 2022 Buildings Safety Act has become an added consideration and significantly changed organisations’ approaches to fire safety.
Heating headaches
Q. What have you found to be some of the most common – or indeed serious – instances of failing school infrastructure that you’ve observed? What are the biggest issues that can catch schools by surprise?
It’s heating equipment that perhaps causes the most issues, though we’re now starting to see many schools install cooling systems across their facilities – and having to manage all the maintenance concerns that come with them, if those systems aren’t properly looked after.
There’s also been the RAAC (Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete) issue in recent years, where building materials were found to be crumbling, which caused huge problems, and in some cases even prompted temporary evacuations from school buildings.
More everyday issues will tend to revolve around things like toilets, simply due to how often they’re used.
The same applies to any parts of a school estate that see heavy use – if you don’t look after them, you’ll end up shouldering the cost of repairs.
What matters most?
Q. Have you come across any noteworthy examples of schools managing their estates especially well?
The most effective schools will be those that have at some point specifically asked, ‘What are the things that matter most to us?’ and then targeted those areas in the course of their maintenance duties.
They still have to carry out their statutory duties, of course – you can’t not inspect your fire safety systems – but they’ll be actively identifying their critical assets, and ensuring that even if they don’t maintain anything else, those statutory and critical assets are being well looked after.
Schools tend to be fairly similar with regards to their facilities. Nearly all will have dedicated classrooms and a shared play area of some kind. Some may have fields (though fewer than in the past, given how many schools have sold off portions of land to generate revenue), many will have specialist laboratory areas with gas taps and the like, and some may have a swimming pool.
It’s a question of schools going through all of that, and identifying which areas are the most important. Having done so, a school may well soon find itself spending money on only a quarter of its total assets. Targeting that spend is key.
Staffing issues
Q. It’s been reported that facilities management teams are increasingly understaffed. What are some of the factors that may be responsible for that?
Across schools and multiple other industries, the favoured practice in recent years has been to outsource maintenance work.
Often, in cases where that’s happened, schools will have effectively passed responsibility for their buildings on to someone else. They’re already paying this organisation to perform maintenance tasks, so it follows that they can potentially also look after the school’s asset register and maintain its asset information.
More recently, however, we’re starting to see that responsibility being brought back in-house. Asset owners are increasingly realising that they need to preserve that responsibility for their buildings. Often only some time after the person on staff who used to run their computer-aided facilities management system was let go!
Another thing is that facilities management continues to be seen as this big overhead.
Schools don’t necessarily view themselves in the same way as, say, a provider of commercial office space or a flexible working venue. Those businesses want to create great spaces for people to work in, and will therefore view their interiors and building maintenance as an essential area of spend that’s necessary for drawing people in.
Finally, it’s worth thinking about the cycle of maintenance. Organisations will now often change their provider every three to five years, with the result that accumulated knowledge and awareness of a school’s specific set of facilities is now gone.
Different points of view
Q. What are the main barriers preventing schools from doing what needs to be done with respect to their facilities management?
We ourselves are looking to help the industry by showing schools that there are different ways of approaching the tasks in question. Identify operational risks, target those areas accordingly and spend your money in the right way, as per the specific needs of your facility.
Finally, we want to further help the facilities management teams based at schools, who should already be involved to some extent with their school’s strategic planning. They shouldn’t just be the people who are called in when something goes wrong.
Paul Bullard is Chief Product Officer at SFG20 – a subsidiary of the Building Engineering Services Association that maintains an online database of building maintenance standards and schedules.
