Expand and deliver

Local authorities need to strike a balance between need, cost and time in how they prioritise the provision of new school places writes programme manager Karen Millar.

As the UK education landscape changes, fresh thinking is being sought to meet the ever-rising demand for places and to manage school estates. As ever, budgets are at the heart of this — even though local authorities still receive some funding directly from central government, the rise of academy status schools, which is creating more independence from local authorities, means local authority estates teams need to be leaner but still make informed decisions on where and how to spend the money.

A forward-thinking wider project management framework, for a whole network of schools, can make this process easier and ultimately help the estate teams to persuade its school to accept development plans.

Managing the scale of expansion

Rising birth rates and the subsequent need for additional school places has led Surrey County Council to set up a five-year, £300+ million programme of school expansions. Ranging from small internal adaptations to building new primary and secondary schools, these projects must be delivered in the most cost-effective way to minimise borrowing.

Our role in this programme is to manage the schools basic-need expansion programme and to support the property service. Starting in late 2013, we were supporting a limited portfolio of 30 schools with delivery dates in 2015 and 2016. Our initial success on the Surrey programme has led to our role growing to embrace the county’s entire schools estate. And through our parallel work with Hampshire County Council, who Surrey County Council regularly collaborates with, we are able to realise the wider benefits of the programme.

At the outset one of the main challenges was to help the local authority adapt existing systems and processes to cope with the scale of expansion, while always keeping a watch on cost effectiveness and education quality. Our programme management team was encouraged to question how things were done, to challenge the status quo, and to scrutinise cost and design information.

Flexible frameworks

One of our first steps was to introduce a project management framework flexible enough for any size of project and which sets out the key milestones with gateways at each stage. Gateway meetings are run to enable the programme team to check that the design is based on the agreed standard and that there is no scope creep or additional area above that required for the increase in pupil numbers. The most important area is deciding which schools are chosen for the expansion. The approach taken is a balanced scorecard with weightings applied to each stakeholder’s view to try to reach a consensus. The information for each school is then kept in a central database so that if there is a further requirement in the future these can be referred to.

There are sometimes competing priorities or interests between the various internal stakeholder groups which include planning, education, finance and property. The school that is the best to expand from an educational perspective might be the most expensive, or perhaps the school with plenty of space and appears cheaper, has complex planning issues that would result in programme delays. The key to minimising the costs is this early engagement so that there is time for mitigation. In these instances our team can become involved in finding a solution that best matches the requirements of stakeholders. We monitor resources and address any shortfalls within the client team, supporting as necessary to enhance and provide short term additional staff as required.

Process and parameters

A Programme Execution Plan (PrEP) was developed and the project management team was inducted to it in a half-day workshop to ensure a consistent approach to all work. Each project manager (PM) had his or her own way of working, so by setting out how projects and the programme were to be managed has meant there is less duplication, rework and reduced margin for error. In addition to the PrEP, a series of workshops was introduced to increase the knowledge base of the PMs, and ensure that all staff were clear on the processes and parameters within which they could work. These also included sessions on the governance structure of the programme, budgeting, including the Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) and statutory processes of the county council.

The cost management of the programme was reviewed, and information provided by project quantity surveyors was challenged and checked. Adopting a consistent format enabled benchmarking, cost reduction and setting targets for cost per square metre.
Most of the Surrey schemes involve increasing numbers of pupils at existing schools on tight urban sites and this creates unique challenges. Much of the work on standardisation that has taken place nationally is for whole new-build schools, so we worked with the council and other partners to develop a Surrey baseline specification for 1FE (form of entry) extensions that sets out acceptable standards.
With the success of the schools programme we are now starting to help Surrey to review its non-schools programme; adapting the schools approach and aligning management across the council’s property service.

Transforming the management of our expansion programme — with quick access to the status of our projects — has meant we can focus on the risks and issues, with time and confidence on our side.

John Stebbings, Chief Property Officer, Surrey County Council