SUMMER MAINTENANCE
WHEN SCHOOLS ARE OUT FOR SUMMER
How are smarter security systems reshaping school estate management, asks Jamie Allam, CEO of Amthal Group Companies.
Summer offers schools a rare opportunity to take a strategic view of their estates. With buildings largely unoccupied, facilities teams can move beyond reactive maintenance and assess whether infrastructure still supports current patterns of use, safeguarding expectations and operational demand.
Jamie Allam, CEO of Amthal Group Companies, highlights recent work at St Martin’s School in Northwood as an example. Rather than focusing solely on routine maintenance or like-for-like replacement, the emphasis was on understanding how the estate functions day to day and where systems no longer align with operational requirements.
Understanding how the
estate operates St Martin’s is an independent preparatory school educating around 400 pupils across a mix of newer and long-established buildings. Like many estates that have developed incrementally, it reflects successive phases of expansion, with infrastructure layered over time to meet changing needs.
While systems remained operational, the estate had not been recently assessed. The review of security provision was prompted by practical questions: how staff and pupils
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move through the site, how different zones are accessed during the day, and how effectively activity is monitored and incidents identified.
The risk assessment identified differences in coverage across the estate and varying levels of visibility between buildings. With systems still fully operational, the focus shifted to improving consistency and enhancing decision- making across the site.
This type of review shifts attention away from whether systems are working in isolation and towards whether they remain suitable for how the school operates today. That distinction becomes more relevant as estates evolve through repeated extensions rather than single, unified design.
Targeted upgrades and
operational alignment The works focused on improving reliability, visibility and response capability across the school. A new intruder alarm system was installed, enabling authorised staff to access alerts and system status remotely rather than relying on fixed monitoring points.
This improvement reflects a wider opportunity to enhance security through smarter technologies, including remote monitoring capabilities and integrated security systems
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