Progress Check: Easter and Summer Works

As we move into those lighter mornings and sunnier days, Clare Skinner reminds us that it’s time to check in on the progress being made with your Easter and Summer estate projects

Whether you are at the half year point (academies) or year end point (maintained schools) you will have a clearer idea on what funds are available and therefore, which projects can be undertaken. For academies we won’t know the outcome of Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) bids for a while longer so don’t forget any contributions that you have committed to those projects when checking affordability of others.

For MATs is your process for the commitment of School Condition Allocation (SCA) underway or completed? For all settings, do think about any projects that may have to delay considering unforeseen maintenance and site issues that have occurred since returning in the new calendar year and take some time to reassess if your plans at Christmas are still realistic.

Easter

With Easter being a quite late this year you have a bit more time to get some work planned in but remember that there are only eight working days over the Easter break. Make sure that your plans will be realised within that slightly shorter time frame. Now is the time to finalise who will be delivering your projects, getting Letters of Intent and contracts in place and booking in pre-start meetings for the end of March so that everyone knows what needs to be happening and to reaffirm that deadlines will be met. Projects can’t overrun into the summer term as school needs to calm and quiet for SATs, GCSE and A Level exams.

Summer

For maintained schools, now is the time to ensure that your budgets for the new financial year include everything that needs to be spent on the estate during the summer break, make sure that your project costs are pinned down in terms of the contracts but allow for contingencies as appropriate.

For those of you in academies, whilst I would understand if you were holding out to hear if you got your CIF/SCA project for affordability reasons before planning anything significant on your estate for the summer, there is still a lot that can be done. As a minimum, get all your statutory compliance activities quoted and booked in and this element of planning applies to maintained settings as well and for any type of school. Having these activities planned will reduce pressure once the CIF bids are announced and mean you can focus on them rather than being distracted on smaller (although vital) matters. Compliance activities being booked in will also mean that all orders have money committed to them, again this will give you a much clearer picture on how much money you will have available to commit to other projects and support your decision-making process. You can think about what could be done if CIF bids are not successful (sorry to be a bit pessimistic!) and funds are freed up to be used elsewhere.

Remember, if you haven’t begun procurement for your summer projects already, you need to ensure that you adhere to the new Procurement Act that came into effect on 24th February 2025.

Big Picture

Including any larger estate development projects alongside of the compliance and small maintenance activities that your site team have planned is key here; will they (and you) have capacity to oversee the contracted work as well as your/their own workload? Think about what your Network Team might be up to (are they Windows 11 ready or is that a huge summer project as well?) and people that they may have on site during the breaks.

Ensuring everyone knows what is happening where and when will mean that everyone gets done what they need to have done; this is where my “not Gantt chart” that I have previously mentioned comes into play and is so useful as everyone can see the schedule of all types of works across the whole school during non-term time. Within the big picture of the summer holidays comes A Level and GCSE results days as well as A Level enrolment for those of you that have a Sixth Form, how will you ensure that work can continue safely with more staff and students on site, or do you need to stop works on those days?

Finally, and possibly the most important thing to think about everyone will need some annual leave (including you!) at some point over both Easter and the summer as well so do factor in all those elements to make sure that nothing is missed, and everything can happen in a cohesive manner without compromising other projects.