An essential component of the general well-being and prosperity of a school district is facilities management. Although it might be a significant task, facilities maintenance is essential to the success of an educational system and its pupils. Maintaining school facilities at peak performance requires a great deal of planning and labor. There are a lot of moving pieces in this intricate task.
What is facility management in schools?
The technique of overseeing and maintaining the assets and facilities owned by schools is known as school facility management.
The main responsibility of the school facility management team is to maintain the facilities’ functionality. This covers everything from structural problems with school buildings to amenities like internet connection, lighting, HVAC, and heating and air conditioning, as well as anything else that helps to create a secure, learning environment for students, and a proper work environment for teachers and staff.
Given that maintaining educational facilities can consume a sizable amount of a district’s budget, resource management plays a significant role in the administration of school facilities. This entails employing maintenance crews and arming them with the equipment required to maintain buildings hygienic and secure, setting up procedures for reporting malfunctions or maintenance needs, and guaranteeing that facilities are always operating at peak performance.
The management of school buildings has a direct impact on education. Prioritizing everyone’s health and safety while using district facilities and school buildings is crucial, but on a daily basis, a lot goes into the real-time administration of a system of huge buildings across a school district.
To put it briefly, a well-managed and maintained facility fosters a learning atmosphere in which teachers may instruct,and distraction-free learning is possible for pupils.
Element of school facility management
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is used by the majority of school systems to assist in managing these continuous demands. Facilities managers use CMMS software to plan maintenance, generate work orders, and arrange jobs. School facilities management software aids in laying the groundwork for a successful management approach.
Aspects of managing school facilities
Cost is undoubtedly a factor in facilities management for the majority of educational systems, especially public schools, where funding is frequently infamously short.
Structures, grounds, and vegetation
The grounds are kept clean and in good operating order with the help of scheduled or as-needed routine and preventative maintenance. The physical buildings and building systems that make up a school district, as well as the telecommunications, security, fire suppression, plumbing, electrical, and power systems, are all considered school facilities.
Along with furniture, supplies, equipment, and information technology, related features of the building grounds like playgrounds, sports fields, outdoor learning spaces, and car access and parking are also included in the count. That’s a big area to cover for a single building, let alone a complex system of buildings.
A CMMS program, like Brightly Asset Essentials, can assist you in scheduling maintenance, managing assets and facilities, andsimplify the procedure for work orders.
Organization and planning of space
The process of organizing, arranging, and managing a building’s space in order to maximize efficiency is known as space planning. This entails setting up procedures to prevent rooms from being reserved twice, enabling employees to arrange gatherings and activities, and establishing a neat and inviting atmosphere for everyone. It’s about making thoughtful, well-informed judgments about the space allotted to each building, including modifying the layout of a room or, when practically feasible, the entire building to optimize the use of available space.
Optimizing the flow of people and equipment within a space to maintain a steady and organized traffic flow is known as space planning and organization. Facility managers are in charge of a building’s daily operations, which include:
- Furniture arrangement and storage
- Design of workstations Lighting and Acoustics
Safety and health
The most important aspect of facility management is making sure that everyone who enters buildings owned and/or run by school districts is safe and healthy. The fundamental responsibility of facilities management is to make sure that buildings are structurally sound, to set up emergency protocols and processes, and to stay current with applicable compliance standards.
Safety
In a similar vein, initiatives to promote health and safety must also prioritize making sure that administrative and educational facilities are protected from harm. These include installing surveillance cameras, alarm systems, and operational campus access control to safeguard the buildings and the occupants.
Energy effectiveness
Since energy efficiency is linked to the expenses of heating and cooling, which have a direct influence on budgets, building energy-efficient school facilities is both environmentally and financially responsible. Schools can save money by using energy management software, such as Brightly Energy Manager, to track energy-saving projects, increase sustainability, and identify waste.
Management of resources
In addition, school facility managers are typically in charge of budgeting, scheduling, ordering supplies and equipment, maintaining inventory, and making sure staff members have access to the resources they require.
Teachers and staff, who frequently require equipment at a specific time, as well as facilities managers, experience less stress when these resources are tracked on the fly, especially when shared equipment and materials are involved. It is frequently beneficial to have a mobile CMMS solution for resource management.
Work orders and maintenance
To efficiently manage the district’s assets, a preventative maintenance plan must be created. Work orders are a crucial component of tracking maintenance requests. Schools may plan and schedule preventative maintenance, manage work orders more efficiently, and communicate with maintenance staff more effectively by utilizing asset management software.
The advantages of managing school facilities
Schools can make improvements by putting in place procedures that assist staff in prioritizing where maintenance needs to be done, money can be saved, and how spaces can be used to utilize their resources to their full potential.
Encourage study and involvement among students
An effective facility management plan for schools helps to maintain the system’s organization and upkeep, which fosters the best possible learning environment and keeps out distractions that could otherwise hinder instruction. For instance, studies reveal that children concentrate better in environments where they feel at ease and are less likely to become sick in well-ventilated, well-lit classrooms.
Cut back on overhead
The district can save money overall by lowering operational costs with the use of a strong facilities management plan. Although savings are evident in many areas, the return on investment is frequently not apparent in the form of higher revenues.
- Costs associated with replacing equipment: Well-maintained equipment requires fewer replacements, which reduces replacement costs.
- Costs of renovation:Preventive maintenance reduces the need for large-scale repairs, which means that building and facility improvements can occur less frequently.
- Costs of overhead: Over time, things like utility bills will go down since well-maintained buildings use less energy and well-maintained HVAC systems operate more effectively.
Process simplification
Staff and teachers feel less stressed and confused when they have a solid strategy in place that includes procedures that are streamlined for things like capital budgeting, event planning, and maintenance scheduling.
Suggestions for efficiently managing school facilities
Managing a school can be a difficult endeavor because there are a lot of moving pieces. However, providing your facilities staff with these resources and the room they need to effectively use them can result in a well-run, orderly facility that satisfies the goals of the district, the tight budgetary constraints, and the needs of learners, teachers, and staff.
Make use of school facility management software.
Using facilities management software for schools enables you to take command of the operations of your school district. In order to support a more intelligent planning strategy, a robust software platform will help you save money, maintain facilities, predict the impact of spending decisions, uncover waste, and prove funding requests.
Be proactive when it comes to maintenance.
It’s simple to allow maintenance to turn into an afterthought. However, being proactive is essential to controlling expenses, carrying out preventative maintenance, and averting future equipment failure and increased expenditures. Preventive maintenance can actually result in a 63% reduction in maintenance costs over the course of three years.
Use environmentally friendly options
Facility managers’ top priority is reducing their carbon footprint. Making more environmentally friendly, moreSustainable practices are smart business, whether they involve cutting waste, keeping recycling services up to date, or utilizing equipment with high Energy Star ratings. Facility managers can accomplish and sustain these sustainability activities as part of a maintenance management software package by putting in place an energy management software platform.
Typical issues with school upkeep
A neat, safe, and organized atmosphere is excellent for both staff and students. However, when organizing and carrying out their task, maintenance personnel must keep the following issues in mind.
1) Excessive damage to the infrastructure
Adolescents and children are not the most mature or responsible people. We realize, what a surprise!
Schools must endure decades of deterioration brought on by large numbers of pupils, many of whom lack sufficient self-discipline for school property. Combine that with tight maintenance budgets and, with enough time, large-scale deterioration of school infrastructure is inevitable.
Even though new school buildings will eventually experience the same wear and tear, maintaining school property is crucial to long-term provision of a secure and comfortable environment.
2) Enforcing adherence to rules about hygiene and cleanliness
Particularly in this pandemic period, maintaining cleanliness and hygiene in any structure is essential to preventing illness. Different governments, like the state of Illinois, have particular hygienic requirements for schools under their control.
It can be difficult to encourage kids to keep their distance and follow sanitation and hygiene guidelines, as most teachers will attest to. The maintenance crew can reduce the hazards by adhering to stringent cleaning and disinfection protocols and making sure there is a constant supply of cleaning products (hand sanitizers,soap, tissue, etc.) in toilets.
3) The problem of keeping IAQ
Indoor pollution levels can be two to five times higher than outdoor levels, according to studies on exposure to air contaminants.
UNICEF and WHO, among other organizations, frequently cite studies demonstrating that children’s lungs are vulnerable to air pollution. Childhood pollution exposure on a regular basis might cause long-term respiratory conditions like asthma. Additionally, the US EPA routinely releases data on this topic.
Building upkeep in an educational setting can lessen possible issues by:
- Eliminating bugs, mold, and dust mites
- When necessary, clean or replace air filters.
- regulating the humidity
- installing, repairing, and modernizing HVAC equipment
- Setting up monitors for air quality
There are several ways to create and enforce a maintenance plan, including traditional pen-and-paper scheduling, spreadsheet tracking, or email updates. But the increasingly popular standard in school maintenance management is the use of facilities management software.
