Operating and Maintaining School Facilities and Grounds
School facility operations and maintenance exist to support the primary purpose of K-12 education: quality
learning. The core responsibility is to ensure that through the provision of quality custodial and maintenance
services- administrators, teachers, and students have an environment that is safe, healthy, and responsive to
educational programming. A comprehensive facility custodial and maintenance program is a school district’s
foremost tool for protecting its investment in school facilities. Moreover, preventive maintenance is the cornerstone
of any effective maintenance initiative.
School facility operations services include the day-to-day running of the school facilities. These services
include but are not limited to: energy management, HVAC, cleaning, inspections, opening and closing school; boiler
operation; responding the daily emergencies; mowing grass; and generating work requests to maintenance.
School plant maintenance provides for the repair, replacement and renewal of failed infrastructure
elements. There is no one way to maintain schools – they are a gamut of size, age, structural systems, etc. A well-
designed facility management system generally encompasses four categories of maintenance: emergency (or
response) maintenance, routine maintenance, preventive maintenance, and predictive maintenance. The one
everyone dreads is emergency maintenance (the air conditioner fails on the warmest day of the year or the main
water line breaks and floods the lunchroom). When the pencil sharpener in Room 12 finally needs to be replaced, it
is routine maintenance. Preventive maintenance is the scheduled maintenance of a piece of equipment (such as the
replacement of air conditioner filters every 10 weeks or the semiannual inspection of the water fountains). Finally,
the cutting edge of facility management is now predictive maintenance, which uses sophisticated computer software
to forecast the failure of equipment based on age, user demand, and performance measures.
A good maintenance program is built on a foundation of preventive maintenance. It begins with an audit of
the buildings, grounds, and equipment. When planning preventive maintenance, decision-makers should consider
how to most efficiently schedule the work— i.e., concurrently with academic breaks or other planned work. For
example, preventive maintenance work such as boiler pipe replacements can be conducted while the boiler is out of
commission for routine maintenance (such as when cleaning the scale and mud from inside the boiler or cleaning the
manhole and handhold plates). Whereas emergency events demand immediate attention whenever they occur,
preventive maintenance activities can be scheduled at a convenient time. Because a rigorous preventive maintenance
system results in fewer emergency events, it tends to reduce disruptions to the school schedule.
Facility Audits
A facility audit (or inventory) is a comprehensive review of a facility’s assets. Facility audits are the
standard method for establishing baseline information about the components, policies, and procedures of a new or
existing facility. An audit is a way of determining the ―status‖ of the facility at a given time—that is, it provides a
snapshot of how the various systems and components are operating. A primary objective of a facility audit is to
measure the value of an aging asset relative to the cost of replacing that asset. Thus, facility audits are a tool for
projecting future maintenance costs. Facility audits are accomplished by assessing buildings, grounds, and
equipment; documenting the findings; and recommending service options to increase efficiency, reduce waste, and
save money. Thus, an audit provides the landscape against which all facilities maintenance efforts and planning
occur.
A facility audit is a data collection process, pure and simple. It should include data on all facilities,
infrastructure, grounds, maintenance staff (e.g., specialized training courses attended), and equipment (including
boilers and HVAC systems), floor finishes, plumbing fixtures, electrical distribution systems, heating and air
conditioning controls, roof types, flooring, furniture, lighting, ceilings, fire alarms, doors and hardware, windows,
technology, parking lots, athletic fields/structures, playground equipment and landscaping, and the building
envelope. Other issues to consider during an audit include accessibility (does a facility meet the requirements of the
Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA?), clean air, asbestos, fire, occupant safety, energy efficiency,
susceptibility to vandalism, and instructional efficiency (e.g., alignment with state and local classroom standards).
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