For boards of management
A board of management looks after its school buildings with limited money and volunteers’ time, and the principal or a maintenance officer usually carries the detail. A school maintenance plan sets out, building element by building element, which works fall due in which year and roughly what they will cost, so the board sees the heavy years coming and can fit the routine checks around them. In Fidrel the plan is the Planned maintenance programme, started from the Irish public-sector template, which the interface describes as covering schools and healthcare. You add your own quantities and prices, and Fidrel gives each year its cost.
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A school built in one phase tends to need its boilers, lighting, toilets and floor coverings in the same few years. Taken one year at a time each looks affordable; taken together they can swallow several years of the board’s maintenance money.
The caretaker, the principal or a long-serving board member knows when the gutters were last cleared or the sports hall floor resealed. When that person moves on, the history goes with them unless it was written down somewhere the next board can find it.
Disruptive work usually waits for the summer holidays, so the board has to decide well before the summer what it can afford. A plan that shows next year’s works and their cost in the spring makes that decision far easier to take.
The Irish public-sector list has 28 actions, written for schools and healthcare buildings alike. For a school the ones that matter most are roof coverings at 50 years, rainwater goods at 30 and a roof inspection with gutter clearance every year; external redecoration every 7 years and internal redecoration every 10; floor coverings at 20 and toilets and washrooms refurbished at 25; sports hall floors sanded and resealed every 10 years and play equipment replaced at 15; footpaths and car parks resurfaced at 25; boilers or heat pumps at 20, with the heating system rebalanced every 10 years; lighting and the fire alarm system at 20; and access control, intruder alarm and CCTV at 15. The figures are typical lifespans rather than findings about your building, and the template comes with no prices.
Fidrel places each replacement in the year its lifespan runs out, counted from the year the school was built, and anything already past that point lands in the programme’s first year. Take a primary school built in 1998 and a ten-year programme starting in 2027. The boilers, lighting, fire alarm system, floor coverings, toilets and washrooms, play equipment, footpaths, external and internal redecoration and the sports hall floor all fall in 2027, because their typical lifespans have already run out. Rainwater goods, entrance doors and fire doors follow in 2028, while windows and roof coverings fall beyond the ten years. No board can do all of that in one summer, so the first real task is to move each first year to when the work is likely to be needed, ideally after someone has looked at the building. Repeating work then comes round on its own interval: external redecoration done in 2027 returns in 2034.
Step 1
Create a new programme with the school’s name, the year it was built, the building type Public sector, the first year and a horizon between five and sixty years, and let Fill in from the template add the actions with typical lifespans.
Step 2
The public-sector list also serves healthcare buildings, so remove or pause actions such as the nurse call system, and add a New action under Other element for anything particular to the school, such as prefabricated classrooms.
Step 3
For each action enter a quantity and unit cost, or a fixed amount each time, and record its priority as High, Normal or Low, for the board to weigh when it decides what to put back if the money does not stretch.
Step 4
After the works, mark each action Done with its date and actual cost, Deferred to a later year or Skipped, and the programme shows the board what actually happened against what was planned.
When a programme is created, Include the statutory recurring inspections is ticked. On the Irish site it adds one line, the lift thorough examination every six months, because that is the only recurring inspection in the Irish facilities template whose interval is marked as set by regulation and given a figure; untick it, or remove the line, if the school has no lift. Other routine checks that cost money, such as the yearly roof inspection already in the list or a service visit you add yourself, sit in the programme as actions with an interval. Anything due more than once a year is counted each time it falls, so the lift examination is costed twice in every year.
When the board sits down to its budget, the programme can hand over a year’s works as an estimate. Make an estimate of the year creates a draft named after the programme and the year, with a line for each action planned or done in it, priced from your quantities and unit costs or fixed amounts. Where the programme sits in a project’s facilities management, that estimate can be approved as the year’s operating budget and the year’s supplier invoices followed against it, line by line, month by month and by supplier. Unpriced actions count as nothing, so a gap in the prices shows up as a year that looks cheaper than it really is.
Boards change every few years, and the programme is meant to outlast them. Each mark records what happened: Done with the date and the actual cost, which replaces the planned figure for that year; Deferred, which moves the cost to a later year and shows where it came from; Skipped, which costs nothing. Work done in a year it was not planned for is shown and counted too. A paused action plans nothing until you start it again, which suits works the board has agreed to leave for now. The whole programme exports to Excel, and the years on screen export as a PDF with Fidrel’s document head, for the board pack.
A principal or maintenance officer can draw up the programme in their own Fidrel Workspace first, where nobody else sees it, and later copy or move it, with its actions and marks, into the facilities management of a project where they may write. Inside a project, everyone who reads the whole of facilities management can open it and members who may write there can change it, so the chair, the principal and the maintenance officer all work from one version instead of three spreadsheets.
Fidrel prepares no grant application and has no link to any funding scheme for school buildings. The programme does not replace a condition survey: the lifespans are typical values from the template, not an assessment of your school. It plans in whole years and does not schedule works into school holidays or weeks. Fidrel gives no prices and adds no inflation; every cost is a figure you enter. Fidrel does not say which inspections the law requires for your buildings.
Your trial applies to your first own project and starts when that project is created. No card required. Afterwards, choose card or invoice to continue.
The project system of the future connects people, documents and decisions. Discover the thinking behind Fidrel.
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On site, answers need to be close at hand. Fidrel displays DWG drawings in your mobile browser, within the project’s document structure.
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When everyone can see the next step, moving the project forward becomes easier. Fidrel brings activities, dates and reported progress together in a shared Gantt view.
Read moreFor boards of management
Anything else on your mind? We are happy to help.
Talk to usNo. The Irish public-sector list covers schools and healthcare buildings together, which is why it includes items such as a nurse call system. Remove or pause what your school does not have.
The template counts each lifespan from the year the school was built, and anything already past it lands in the first year of the programme. Move each first year to when the work is really expected.
Yes. Give each action a priority of High, Normal or Low, defer works to a later year, or pause an action so that it plans nothing until the board comes back to it.
No. It gives building elements, actions and typical lifespans only. Enter quantities and unit costs, or a fixed amount each time, from your own quotes or a surveyor’s figures.
Yes. Anyone who may edit the programme can export all of it to Excel, or export the years shown as a PDF, ready to circulate with the board papers.
The Irish template proposes ten years, and you can choose anything from five to sixty. A longer horizon brings in the roof and windows, which may not fall within a ten-year plan at all.
