All schools require a suitable facilities management strategy before they can operate efficiently, and indeed many schools do have a basic one in place. However, many fail to realise the true potential of a comprehensive FM strategy as they may not have the time or resources required. Regardless of this, it’s still important in many ways for your school to develop a stronger FM plan, and we’re going to show you exactly what they are! Here are 7 reasons why every school needs an effective facilities management strategy.
Safety
We mention it frequently here at Aegis, but that’s because it should always be the primary responsibility and focus of every school. School safety is incredibly important and an effective facilities management strategy will help you to stay on top of it – whether it’s by keeping the grounds and buildings clean, developing emergency procedures, improving security, or training to create a safer learning environment.
Costs
Possibly the next priority for many school leaders is battling to keep costs down without negatively affecting the school’s conditions or performance. Schools unfortunately rarely receive sufficient funding to be able to support all of their needs to the fullest, which is why FM is so important. It can lower your costs from a wide range of perspectives, from reducing energy costs, to streamlining your supply chain costs ,to lowering property maintenance and recovery costs by helping you to act preventatively.
Academic Performance
The condition of the learning environment can massively impact how well students can learn and concentrate. Things like air temperature, lighting, and safety (including being safe from bullying) all affect academic performance. An effective facilities management strategy will help you to optimise all of these factors and in turn, create a better learning environment for all of your students.
Teacher Turnover
High teacher turnover is a major issue for schools because it disrupts the academic year and leads to significantly increased costs. Luckily, there’s an effective way to minimise the issue, and that’s by improving your school facilities. Several studies in the US have shown that well-maintained buildings and classrooms that are free from disruption and provide safety can reduce teacher turnover by around 25%.
School Appearance & First Impressions
School buildings can be complicated to maintain, especially without a proper plan or any preventative action in place. However, by implementing one, schools are able to see positive returns on their investment as buildings and school grounds can be kept in optimal condition for longer and more affordably. For your school, this could help you to improve the overall appearance of your school which strikes a great first impression with any visitors or parents!
Sustainability
It’s estimated that almost a third of the UK’s total emissions come from buildings, mostly through things like energy usage and materials used for repairs over time. Effective facilities management strategies will allow you to save energy across your school, repair buildings with more sustainable materials, and reduce the frequency at which your buildings will need repairs. All of this helps your school to reduce it’s carbon footprint and become better for our environment!
Compliance
As a school in the UK, you must meet a wide range of standards in order to show that you can provide safe education to every one of your students, whilst giving teachers a suitable working environment. In order to comply with these guidelines and requirements, it’s essential that you have a long term strategy in place that is consistently seeking to improve facilities, modernise equipment, and become even more safe.
Whilst facilities management can be a time-consuming and costly task, it doesn’t have to be. Outsourcing your FM to a professional provider not only frees up your time to focus on improving results, but it will give you a positive return on investment that, in the long run, helps your school to stay on budget and lower overall running costs whilst actually improving the quality of the school grounds.