Facilities Management: Deferring Maintenance or Replacement Can Be Costly

Construction, remodeling, and maintenance aren’t often front and center topics when independent K-12 schools are developing and implementing risk management strategies. But failure to maintain and upgrade facilities and infrastructure can lead to costly risks, including personal injury.

Failure to repair or upgrade school buildings, grounds, and infrastructure does more than damage curb appeal. Liability costs arising from rickety stairs or balconies, uneven floors, rotting window frames, pitted parking lots, and aging electrical or plumbing systems can dilute any savings gained by delaying construction, paving, or rewiring.

For example, slips and falls on stairways, sidewalks, and other common areas are among the most common and costliest risks independent schools face, according to Risk, Claims, and What Keeps You Up at Night, a report based on a claims study conducted by United Educators and the National Business Officers Association. Day schools had more slip and fall claims, but boarding schools paid more to settle them.

What is your school doing to prevent such claims? Administrators at the Greenhill School, La Jolla Country Day School, and Vermont Academy understand the importance of guarding their facilities maintenance and replacement budget and the relationship between infrastructure upkeep and safety.

Five-Year Forecast

The Greenhill School allots 2 percent of the replacement value of the physical plant each year toward repairs, renovations, and special maintenance, which this year totals $1.9 million. To help direct how that money is spent, an independent third party performs a detailed facilities audit that includes scrutinizing hardscape, roofing, electrical, HVAC equipment, and fire safety at the Addison, Texas, school.

“It’s probably the easiest thing to cut if you’re ever short of funds,” said Melissa Orth, chief operating officer/chief financial officer. “During the recession in 2008 and 2009, had we not be able to maintain full enrollment, it would have simple for people to look at that allocation and say, ‘Well, that’s something for the future.’ It’s definitely a financial discipline, but we’re fortunate that our administrative team, head of school, the board, and finance committee appreciate the importance of that discipline. We really haven’t had to fight to protect that 2 percent.”

Katie Robbins, Greenhill’s director of finance and human resources, points out that the 2 percent is not intended to cover high-ticket items, such as a new building, which would involve a fundraising campaign. “That 2 percent is set aside to cover deferred maintenance and small renovations—if, for example, we need to reconfigure a classroom into something that better meets our educational program.”

Although certain aspects of the facilities inspection are reviewed annually, other areas may be examined only once every two, three, or four years. “For example, the roof doesn’t need to be looked at as often as the electrical and HVAC,” Orth said. 

“The audit provides us with a detailed list of all of the deferred maintenance on campus with an estimated cost, which helps us prioritize what is deemed most important to least important. The most urgent might be a safety or security issue—something that if we don’t take care of it, a person or building could be at risk or it might cause more damage in the future,” Orth said.

Based on the audit, the leadership team develops a five-year forecast of capital needs for repairs, renovations, and maintenance of the 75-acre campus with 16 buildings, some of which have been replaced or renovated during the school’s 50 years at this site.

With 1,290 day students in pre-K through 12th grade, the volume of ongoing activity can be a challenge. “We have people on this campus seven days a week—maybe not 24 hours a day—but it’s getting close. From temperature calls to general repairs to light bulbs out to setups for activities, it takes a lot of manpower, coordination, and prioritization. Trying to be timely and proactive and anticipating items before they become issues is the biggest challenge,” she said. “We have a good handle of what needs to be done. It’s really just finding the time and manpower to stay on top of it.”

Three years ago, Greenhill conducted a safety and security assessment that scrutinized facilities and examined operating practices, policies, and procedures. In addition to implementing a new visitor management system, the school:

• Began to regularly trim bushes and trees to eliminate potential hiding places and provide an unimpaired sightline across campus
• Periodically conducts a lighting assessment to identify dark pockets
• Enhanced windows with safety glass in areas used for shelter during hazardous weather or a campus lockdown
• Installed thumb-turn locks on bathrooms and storage areas where students and faculty can hide during a threat

Two Percent Solution

La Jolla Country Day School also strives for a 2 percent reserve—$1 million—for ongoing and deferred facilities maintenance, said Mark L. Marcus, assistant head of school for operations. The California school conducted a study of the infrastructure and developed a maintenance and upgrade management schedule.

School administrators, the board, the buildings and grounds committee, and finance committee decide funding levels. “We strive to forecast five years ahead, budget capital improvements annually, and update the schedule several times during the year as needs and maintenance dictate,” Marcus said.

During a recent seven-year span, La Jolla completed a $60-million facilities upgrade on the 24-acre campus, adding a:

• 37,000-square-foot middle school
• 37,500-square-foot library and administration building
• 25,000-square-foot visual arts and science building

It also remodeled classrooms, created additional parking, relocated and replaced six tennis courts, and added artificial turf to softball, baseball, and football fields, along with new bleachers, concessions, and storage.

The school relied on fundraising and loans to pay for the improvements. “We’ll organize a fundraising effort for future improvements that require building or remodeling” instead of borrowing additional funds, he said.

La Jolla is also working to support the academic program’s changing needs for collaborative classrooms, which will require flexibility, with moveable furniture and spaces for kids to meet in groups and exchange ideas, Marcus said. The school has one such innovation lab that serves the lower and upper schools. “We feel that education is going in this direction. Ultimately, we would like to have a much larger space to provide this experience for the students.”

Facilities management is a part of La Jolla’s risk management efforts, and the school is undergoing an enterprise risk management review with an outside consultant. “We are responsible for providing and maintaining a safe and secure environment,” Marcus said. The school recently added a sophisticated camera system that records up to 30 days of activity with 36 cameras, allowing the school to “keep a good eye on what is happening on campus 24/7.”

140 Years Later…

Keeping facilities up to date is even more challenging at a historic school. Vermont Academy, a 140-year-old high school in Saxtons River, has a budget of $255,700 for buildings and grounds and $160,000 for campus repairs—4 percent of the school’s budget. “Our resources are very tight,” said Inessa Muse, business manager at the school, which services 240 students, including about 165 boarders and 20 to 30 percent international students.

As a result, every project is prioritized. “We go forward based on what we have for a budget,” said Gary Graham, director of buildings and grounds. “It can be expensive to maintain an older structure to a certain standard. We spend a lot of time not just working on those buildings but also planning how we can make them better.”

Plaster walls, old staircases that don’t always hold paint well, and the outdated heating systems create problems. “It’s constant maintenance,” Graham said. “We have a full-time plumber who does a heroic job keeping our heating and plumbing systems up to date and in good shape, but it’s labor intensive. We try to upgrade equipment as it fails or breaks.”

Muse said a fundraising tactic that seems to work is creating a list of possible projects that could be attractive to the school’s constituencies, including alumni, board members, and parents. “Just a couple of years ago, the parents’ association put money aside for restoring our walking path from the main campus to our dorms,” she said. “The concrete block path was unsafe, and the wooden railings were old. When we can, we attract donors to those kinds of projects.”

One alumnus from the 1960s, for example, donated $25,000 to purchase a new snowmaking machine for the ski jump hill.

“One beauty about our situation is the great support we have from our alumni and parents,” Graham said. “The reality is you just need to set your priorities on what your school needs are, and every school is different. You need to get your management group together and decide what’s important and what’s not, and organize your efforts in that direction.” 

By Margo Vanover Porter, a freelance education and business writer