Chapter 2
Planning for School Facilities Maintenance

		To explain why planning is an essential component of managing school facilities maintenance activities
		To communicate that effective facilities management requires the support of many stakeholders throughout the organization and community
		To confirm that informed decision-making demands ready access to high-quality data that describe the status of the organization's facilities, needs, and capabilities

• Effective Management Starts with Planning
• Why Collaborate during Planning (and with Whom)?
• Creating a Unified Organizational Vision
• Links to Budgeting and Planning
• Data for Informed Decision-Making
• Commonly Asked Questions
• Additional Resources
• Planning for School Facilities Maintenance Checklist

Good data are necessary to inform good decision-making. It is as simple as that. Thus, facilities maintenance plans should be based on a foundation of high-quality data about all school facilities. Otherwise, planners are forced to work without context, and strategic planning becomes strategic guesswork. Planners must know what facilities exist, where they are located, how old they are, and their status/condition. Are equipment and facilities working as designed? As they should? As they need to be?
 

Additionally, planners must consider projected needs for the future. For example, demographers can provide important estimates of the projected growth of student populations-that is, how many school-age children will be in each neighborhood over the next decade. The only way to ensure that planners have the information they need to make effective decisions is to collect data in a regular, timely, and consistent manner. Data collection is a time-consuming (and ongoing) task that cannot be overlooked. For efficiency's sake, an education organization may partner with other entities that share their interest in school facilities data-for example, the local Chamber of Commerce, the state government, or even local real estate companies. Chapter 3 of this Planning Guide discusses facilities audits (i.e., data collections), which are an important area of focus for responsible facilities managers. The National Forum on Education Statistics has developed a companion publication, Facilities Information Management: A Guide for State and Local School Districts, to help address these issues. It can be downloaded at http://nces.ed.gov/forum/publications.asp.
 

Commonly Asked Questions

Why plan for school facilities maintenance?
Facilities maintenance doesn't occur in a vacuum. After all, grounds and buildings belong to school districts, not maintenance departments. The maintenance department's job is to ensure that facilities and grounds are in adequate condition to support the mission of the district. Thus, day-to-day maintenance activities must be guided by a school facilities maintenance plan that is informed by, and aligned with, a larger organizational plan. Without a coordinated plan, it is impossible to know whether day-to-day maintenance operations support current and future organizational priorities.

Why should an organization go to the trouble of including stakeholders in facilities maintenance planning?
Stakeholder feedback provides new perspectives and fresh ideas to the planning process. Moreover, when stakeholders participate in organizational planning, they are more likely to buy into the strategies that they have helped to establish. "Buy-in" becomes especially significant when one recognizes that likely stakeholders in the facilities maintenance planning process include maintenance and custodial staff, teachers, parents, students, superintendents, principals, board members, school business officials, and community groups.

Why should an organization bother to develop a "vision statement" for facilities maintenance?
A vision statement helps to focus facilities maintenance policies, procedures, and day-to-day operations on the needs of the larger organization. Without a vision statement (the target), management risks inefficient use of resources by squandering time, money, and effort on activities that are not consistent with the long-term needs of the organization. Moreover, a well-publicized vision statement reminds staff at all levels of the overarching purpose of their work.

Who reads a vision statement?
Hopefully, lots of people, but that is a function of how well the organization disseminates the vision statement. A vision statement only has impact when it is read. Thus, it should be shared with everyone who maintains, supports, or uses school facilities. If stakeholders are aware of the organization's vision for its future, they can align their own long- and short-term plans to direct day-to-day activities in support of that vision.

Additional Resources

Every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of the URLs listed in this Guide at the time of publication. If a URL is no longer working, try using the root directory to search for a page that may have moved. For example, if the link to http://www.epa.gov/iaq/schools/performance.html is not working, try http://www.epa.gov/ and search for "IAQ."

American School and University Annual Maintenance and Operations Cost Study
http://images.asumag.com/files/134/mo%20school.pdf
An annual survey that reports median national statistics for various maintenance and operations costs, including salary/payroll, gas, electricity, utilities, maintenance and grounds equipment and supplies, outside contract labor, and other costs.

Budgeting for Facilities Maintenance and Repair Activities
http://www.nap.edu/books/NI000085/html/index.html
An online publication that focuses on how to estimate future facility maintenance and repair needs. Federal Facilities Council, Standing Committee on Operations and Maintenance, National Research Council (1996) National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Community Participation in Planning
http://www.edfacilities.org/rl/community_participation.cfm
A list of links, books, and journal articles about how community members can become involved in the planning and design of school buildings and grounds. National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, Washington, DC.

Creating a Vision
http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/cav.html
An online toolkit from the National School Boards Association for creating a vision in school organizations.

Maintenance & Operations Costs
http://www.edfacilities.org/rl/mo_costs.cfm
A list of links, books, and journal articles citing national and regional maintenance and operations cost statistics and cost-reduction measures for the upkeep of school buildings and grounds. National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, Washington, DC.

Maintenance Planning, Scheduling and Coordination
A book focusing on the preparatory tasks that lead to effective utilization and application of maintenance resources: planning, parts acquisition, work measurement, coordination and scheduling. Nyman, Don and Levitt, Joel (2001) Industrial Press, New York, NY, 320pp.

The Rural and Community Trust
http://www.ruraledu.org/facilities.html
The web site of The Rural and Community Trust, which works with many small towns and counties in which the school remains the center of the community. The Rural and Community Trust provides a network for people who are working to improve school-community facilities, increase community participation in the facilities design process, and expand the stakeholders these public resources can serve.

A Visioning Process for Designing Responsive Schools
http://www.edfacilities.org/pubs/sanoffvision.pdf
A guide for helping stakeholders establish the groundwork for designing and building responsive, effective community school facilities, including an explanation of the benefits of community participation and how to go about the process of strategic planning, goal setting, articulating a vision, design generation, and strategy selection. Sanoff, Henry (2001) National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, Washington, DC, 18pp.

Planning for School Facilities Maintenance Checklist

More information about accomplishing these checkpoints can be found on the pages listed in the right-hand column.