EFFICIENCY IN MEDICAL & EDUCATIONAL BUILDINGS
Making maintenance pay in cash strapped schools
School budgets are stretched, with building maintenance often falling to the bottom of the pile, potentially impacting teaching and student wellbeing. Steve McGregor, Executive Chairman for the DMA Group, looks at the ways in which digital tools can help educational establishments work smarter and more cost effectively, while ensuring consistent standards across multiple sites
T
he state of educational buildings has hit the headlines this year. Public sector buildings in general have come under scrutiny following a National Audit Office (NAO) report that highlights maintenance backlogs across key public services including schools, hospitals and prisons. Estimated costs to rectify these failings stand at £49 billion and is likely to be higher due to poor government data. Schools, alongside Ministry of Defence and NHS properties make up the majority of the backlog, with costs totalling more than £10bn. Although the Government is aiming to raise funds for all public services, including education, the last Budget only increased state school capital spending from £6.3 to £6.5 billion in 2025 – 2026, nowhere near the £10bn suggested by the NAO’s reports. Private schools are also feeling the pinch following the removal of charitable business rate relief in April. To raise much needed funds and reimagine the ways multiple schools operate, leading property experts, Savills, predicts the continued expansion of multi trust academies, enabling educational facilities to share resources and also consolidate management functions. Some schools are resorting to disposing of assets to bring much needed cash – in Savills view, in most cases this approach doesn’t deliver a sustainable long-term solution, it says: “effective and efficient operation of the core school estate is key.” This is where a strategic, data driven approach to maintenance can really make a difference, particularly when it comes to building services, which are so crucial to the overall school experience and consequent learning outcomes.
Climactic considerations
Temperature control, lighting and air quality, all have a significant impact on wellbeing, productivity and happiness; cutting corners with these elements has the potential to stifle learning and both pupil and teacher satisfaction. In fact, according to a 2013 study which rated classrooms based on orientation, light, temperature, colour and air quality, “73
percent of the variation in pupil performance driven at the class level can be explained by the building environment factors measured in this study.” This means that “placing an average pupil in the least effective, rather than the most effective classroom environment could affect their learning progress by as much as the average improvement across one year.” Creating a consistent approach to environment
across multiple sites can be a challenge, particularly in the case of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) where the portfolio is often diverse in terms of the age and needs of learners. Collaboration between all parties involved in a buildings upkeep is key, with a focus on asset protection, energy efficiency and downtime prevention crucial to minimising disruption to school operations. Getting this balance right can be hard enough at one site, when you throw many locations operating under one banner into the mix, it becomes all the more complex.
The right approach to multi-site management
We have helped Leigh Academies Trust (LAT), one of the UK’s largest MATs overseeing 32 academies and more than 20,000 students across Kent, Medway and South East London, to consolidate, streamline, standardise and digitalise maintenance approaches, with a focus on quality, efficiency and cost- effectiveness. As with many school portfolios, buildings are extremely varied, ranging from older properties to state-of-the art new builds. The key to successfully standardising such a
large estates approach to maintenance was using a single digital service management and workflow management platform, which brings all of LAT’s building services operations under one banner. This ensures service delivery is consolidated and easily visible across the trust with operational status, performance and statutory compliance now viewed live within one system, giving oversight of all buildings and their needs ensuring value for money and significant cost savings too. Everything is tracked from A -to Z, so every stakeholder including the customer has live and transparent operational visibility. Smart automated calls to action mean nothing
BiO® - tracking assets and
people at LAT DMA maintains 6,400 of LAT’s assets, with an average of 80 reactive jobs per month. Everything is tracked using BiO®, DMA Group’s own cloud-based service management platform, which grants FMs, building maintenance teams, service partners, building owners and occupiers with a live, transparent and comprehensive perspective of all critical estate-related information, including detailed insights into individual sites, up-to-date data on maintenance activities, record-keeping, statutory compliance documentation, certifications, asset status, and expenditure. Accessible from any device, anywhere, BiO® harnesses the power of automation to create workflows and issue timely ‘calls-to- action,’ ensuring that customers, teams and service partners respond promptly to meet needs and resolve issues.
important is ever missed. Live dashboards ensure everyone knows what’s going on every moment of every day, all helping to facilitate right first-time works. Using our specially developed platform has the potential to save wasted man hours by ensuring every engineer and service partner that arrives at a site has the right qualifications and tools for the job in hand. Keeping assets in good condition and working efficiently saves money through reduced energy consumption and the prevention of expensive repairs. In addition, this platform is now automatically planning maintenance engineer’s tasks using embedded AI. This means that planners can focus on the exceptions, rather than huge quantities of complex variable data analysis necessary to simply send the right engineer, with the right tools, to the right site, at the right time, with right PPE, every time. We cannot rely on technology alone, however, and any successful maintenance strategy, particularly where disparate teams are involved, needs consistent skills training. ‘People’ are also core to ensuring understanding and mutually beneficial relationships – every site must feel it is as important as the next in order to create a one-team mentality. LAT’s success shows that there are ways that our failing public sector buildings can be improved, using smart technology that enables a digital transformation leading to long terms cost savings and enhanced service delivery, benefitting both budgets and building users. A lack of investment has caused the current state of affairs laid out by the NAO; investment in the right tools and approaches will pay dividends over time, however, potentially saving money that can be used to enhance not retract precious public services.
18 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER JUNE 2025 Read the latest at:
www.bsee.co.uk
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