The potential savings from educational facilities maintenance are more important as budgets are assessed prior to the end of the schools’ financial year. From burgeoning energy costs to ongoing building maintenance requirements, governing bodies and local authorities are faced with myriad financial complexities.
Schools face a range of challenges as they go into the new year. Recent headlines have included the perfect storm of declining pupil numbers, worries around the financial viability of universities, crumbling school infrastructure, and an exodus of teachers from the profession – as well as the end of the private school VAT exemption.
How can educational facilities maintenance define the strategies that get the best value from budgets? If you are re-evaluating your building maintenance and management with budget in mind, take a look at the following recommendations from our team of experts at Voltix Services.
1. Make Sure You’re Meeting Building Compliance Regulations
Keeping up with compliance is one of the greatest challenges for educational facilities maintenance. It is also a vital starting point in creating an effective educational facilities maintenance strategy. Additionally, the paper trail left by internal maintenance managers is often patchy and incomplete.
The team of directly-employed engineers at Voltix provide up-to-date knowledge of building compliance requirements for schools, universities, and academies. We also hold the required industry approvals and certifications for checks, inspections, and maintenance protocols. Through our remotely accessible client portal, our clients have access to their compliance information, certifications, and upcoming requirements at all times. This is a top way to save time and resources – and remove the risk of non-compliance.
2. Create a Facilities Maintenance Priority List
Underfunding and budget challenges make budget allocations a tricky business. Our facilities maintenance company not only provides professional, practical facilities maintenance solutions; our team conducts assessments and creates a strategy based on priority and budget. This helps schools to identify crucial infrastructure needs – and areas where they can maximise savings.
For example, maximising energy efficiency is an easy and essential way for schools to cut costs. We help schools fine-tune energy management and reduce consumption and spend on their energy bills.
3. Leverage Technologies and Innovation
Are legacy systems costing you? Upgraded building management systems or the investment into strategically placed IoT sensors hold powerful potential to streamline facilities maintenance scheduling, provide an early warning system and circumvent high repair and emergency callout charges, and save time and resources.
4. Identify and Mitigate Risk Through Planned Preventative Maintenance
While increased schools budgets are an encouraging development, these need to be weighed against budget pressures like the challenges of growing government targets and increasing inflation. The most important outcomes of budget allocations remains the safety and wellbeing of staff and learners, as well as the quality of education that takes place within these facilities. This makes futureproofing critical systems an important consideration for educational facilities maintenance managers.
Planned preventative maintenance is essential to ensure critical systems are in good working order. From heating and cooling to fire safety, comprehensive maintenance plays an important role in keeping schools running.
At Voltix, we specialise in comprehensive facilities maintenance solutions. Our team has the expertise to simplify this as much as possible and achieve the best results – while saving time, money, and resources. We also incorporate a condition-based maintenance approach for the most important assets and equipment in every school. This helps to mitigate risk, optimise processes, and reduce costs.
Speak to the Voltix Services team today to strategise around your school budget.