Looking Ahead to Your Easter and Summer Works

Planning works over Easter? Clare Skinner outlines practical strategies for school estates planning, emphasising the importance of clear priorities, realistic capacity assessments, detailed specifications, and meticulous project management

Now that the festive frivolities are over and a well-earned break has been had, it is time to get our planning heads back in the game to think about works that need to take place over the Easter and summer holidays.

Priorities

Take time to discuss the estates needs with your leadership team, is the latest version of the Strategic Estates Plan still relevant or have things changed? What needs to be done in relation to the SDP or trust development plan to meet the strategic aims of the current year? Get confirmation before you do anything so that no time is wasted.

Capacity

Now that you know what needs to be done, you can assess what can be done. Consider the smaller projects over Easter as, effectively, you only have 8 days to do them in with the Bank Holidays impacting time available. Looking at the summer, did you put any CIF bids in before Christmas or have the LA agreed to any significant capital projects already?

If they have, what capacity do you and your estates team have to run other projects alongside them? Be realistic and don’t set impossible targets. Consider if you can actually achieve this on your own or with your team; the scale and complexity of the project may mean it is outside your area of expertise (although we are superheroes, so it probably isn’t!). If it is, get some external help; project managers, property consultants, H&S advisors, main contractors and architects are all available to make the project successful.

Specification

With the priorities confirmed and workload agreed, you can now draw up a spec for the projects. Some of these will be really simple and only need quotes but others will need more detail to go out to tender, depending on your internal finance policies. Consult with the relevant stakeholders on what the spec is and, sometimes more importantly, what it isn’t. Make sure you have enough information to get an accurate quote/tender price first and be in a position to avoid costly mid-work variations to the contract because someone changes their mind about paint colour and trim finish two days into the project! Be very clear with stakeholders that such changes will not happen so that their expectations on the finished product are clearly set from the beginning.

Procurement

We all know it is coming, so do not forget about the implications of the Procurement Act from February 2025. Know the difference in the rules before and after the change comes into effect and, if you are not a procurement expert, get help to be compliant. You can use frameworks and consortia where appropriate and can get references (or warnings of what to avoid) from your local networks of SBPs. Encourage contractors to visit the site so they really understand the project, its objectives and what you are like as a client.

Understand if you can work with them, be confident that they understand what delivering a project in a school looks like; check that they appreciate challenges around payment terms when there is no-one around in the holidays to sign off a BACS run – plan your certification and invoicing accordingly, discuss the fact they cannot work on A Level enrolment day as the site will be crawling with students and make absolutely sure that they can meet your safeguarding requirements around DBS should the project run into term time for any reason. Build these terms and KPIs into the tender pack so that they can be held accountable for meeting your requirements.

Timescales

Do everything in the right order so it gets done right. Give yourself enough time to draw up your spec, get pricing, review the quotes/tenders, appoint your contractor and sign the deal; don’t compromise your project by rushing any element of it. Consider the risks that this would bring whether they relate to cost, safety or educational impact and make sure that you avoid them.

Project Planner

I’d love to call it a Gantt chart but it really isn’t; I use a spreadsheet to plan, schedule and communicate all works booked for the holiday periods. The sheet blocks out the dates that each contractor will be on site and where they will be working, the main and secondary contacts for the project and which member of the school team is leading the project. That way, anyone coming into school during the holidays will know who to get in touch with should they have a query. It also means that, if anyone is on leave from the school team, the rest of us know what should be happening when and can make sure it does.

That’s the hard part over, now you just have to deliver all of those lovely projects… Good luck!