Schools get extra help

A new initiative aimed at helping education clients think about procurement routes, as well as how they treat contractors and manage budgets, has been launched by medium-sized property services contractor Ian Williams.

Rather than being driven by government, school headteachers are being offered a series of three, one-day seminars by the contractor to allow discussion and education on best practice in terms of maintenance and construction work outside of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

The final outcome of the seminars, entitled Getting the best out of educational premises: Ensuring buildings work for you – not against you and produced in partnership with the University of the West of England, will be more enlightened clients. This aims to help contractors that have been penalised through fixed-price contracts that go wrong, and clients, who will get better value for money.

“A lot is being reported on the BSF, but there is a lot of work going on that is not within the programme,” said Ian Williams business development director, Mike Turner.

“With the devolvement of capital, repair and maintenance budgets directly to schools, there is now a hugely fragmented market with no contractor holding a market share.

“Headteachers now have more responsibility to ensure works carried out at their schools are done to the required standard, even though it is not their core business. There is a lot of confusion and, in some cases, best value is not being achieved.”

Turner said the seminars are also expected to tackle health and safety standards during school work, which now comes even more under the Health & Safety Executive’s radar.

In tandem with the seminars, Ian Williams is working with the university on a research paper to help paint a picture of whether schools are partnering with the private sector, how they interact with contractors and how they choose the companies they work with.

It is hoped that the document, due out at the end of the year, will pinpoint trends of maintenance and construction work in the education sector and will provide valuable information for contractors on the type of clients they could work with.

[Contract Journal, 27 September 2006, p 6]