Synergy News & Blog: London Office
Plan your maintenance and protect your investment
In the current crisis, with pressures on budget it could be easy to put off planned preventative maintenance. However in fact it should be a key area of consideration as schools look to protect their current assets and plan for the future, post Covid-19.
Proactively identifying defects by providing an assessment of the condition of the structure, fabric and finishes of your buildings (roof, window, floors etc.) and the mechanical and electrical equipment (boiler, electrics, etc.) can save significant costs.
If maintenance work is omitted from budgets as it is not perceived to provide a visible and tangible benefit to the school in the short term then as a consequence, when repair work is required it can often be more significant both in terms of scope and extent of work required as well as cost.
Cost can, in this context, be considered not only in respect of the physical cost of the repair work, but also in terms of disruption to the day-to-day running of the school.
Such problems can be overcome by producing a planned preventative maintenance survey (PPM) for your school estate.
Each defect is given a priority rating ranging from A through to D, alongside the cost to rectify the issue to aid budgeting of any required works. The PPM survey includes an extensive schedule of photographs visually explaining the defects.
Synergy’s Surveyors utilise Smart Mobile Reporting Technology which allows our teams to efficiently and accurately collect data on even the biggest on-site project.
An intuitive PPM programme is developed which considers the timing of projects to achieve economies of scale. An example is a window replacement programme, which could be coordinated with external repairs so that scaffolding need only be required once.
For our school clients a PPM can be a standalone exercise or it is increasingly used as an integral part of a strategic Masterplan to ensure that planned repair and maintenance takes into account any future development plans. For the Voluntary Aided and Academy school sectors, these robust documents often provide overwhelming evidence to support capital-funding applications e.g. Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) and the Local Authority Co-ordinated Voluntary Aided Programme (LCVAP).
In these unsettled economic times, when funds for unexpected expenditure is limited, we have noted an upsurge in school clients requiring a PPM survey.
