A School Maintenance Plan and Schedule allows principals and facility managers to be proactive in their approach to maintenance, ensure the safety of staff and students and prevent the likelihood of costly building repair and rectification works down the track.
What does a school maintenance plan and schedule cover?
For school principals, who are ultimately responsible for ensuring their school’s buildings, grounds, and infrastructure are well maintained and safe, a School Maintenance Plan and Schedule is an important management tool. It allows current or potential safety risks to be identified and managed, maintenance activities to be appropriately budgeted for and undertaken in a systematic and strategic manner and can be an essential component in securing funding from government and external bodies for these works.
A school maintenance plan and schedule will typically encompass and detail the maintenance requirements of the school’s physical assets and services, including:
- Buildings and structures
- Plumbing
- Electrical fixtures and equipment
- Grounds and sporting facilities
The maintenance plan identifies all maintenance activities and repair works required, both routine and preventative, and prioritises each individual activity to create a maintenance schedule that becomes a live document.
A proactive and strategic approach to managing and budgeting for maintenance activities and works
As specialist education architects and learning environment designers, B2 Architecture has supported many government, Catholic, and independent primary and secondary schools in preparing, maintaining, and managing their school maintenance plans and schedules.
Our strategic approach enables school principals to be proactive, rather than reactive, in their approach and prevent potentially costly and disruptive rectification works in the future. Tailored to the unique needs, objectives, requirements, facilities and structures of each school we partner with, the scope of work will often involve:
1. Site inspection and comprehensive audit and visual inspection of:
- Buildings and structures
- External fabric
- Fixed furniture and fittings
- Internal fabricInternal finishes
- Electrical – light fittings, switchboards etc.
- Hydraulics – storage units, boilers etc
- Mechanical services
- Plumbing fixtures
- Site – roads, footpaths, fencing, shade structures, outbuildings etc.
- Facilities – pools, sporting grounds etc.
2. Audit report and recommendations detailing:
- Overall school condition and individual building/asset condition scores
- All Defects, with relevant images, including:
- Intervention priority – within 6 months, 12 months, 1 to 2 years, 3 to 4 years, beyond 5 years.
- If there is an OHS implication.
- Recommended intervention timing.
- Works and trades and/or specialists required.
- Any further assessments required by specialist consultants (structural engineer, plumbing, electrical etc.), including a brief for the consultant.
3. Development of maintenance schedule
A live schedule that details required maintenance activities, works and investigations and associated budgets.
4. Engage and manage specialist consultants – if required
5. Documentation, tender and project management – if required
The benefits of a specialised school building maintenance plan and schedule
A comprehensive school building audit and maintenance plan undertaken and prepared by a specialist provides principals, facility managers and school boards with a number of benefits, including:
- Providing the necessary documentation to support federal and state government funding applications.
- The ability to effectively forecast and budget for maintenance works and activities.
- Providing a basis for a proactive and preventative approach to maintenance that will often extend the lifespan of buildings and structures and reduce the likelihood of costly and disruptive rectification or demolition works in the future.
