School facilities and educational goals go hand-in-hand. Schools require extensive maintenance, ranging from preventive upkeep to major facility renovations. School maintenance ensures a comfortable learning environment for students and aligns school facilities with the organization’s educational objectives. Managing these ongoing maintenance tasks represents a significant part of many school leaders’ responsibilities.
For facility managers and their staff, ongoing maintenance can quickly become overwhelming. Without strategic goals and a comprehensive facility management plan, maintenance tends to become more reactive rather than proactive. By engaging in strategic goal setting and implementing these goals through structured work orders, schools can break the cycle of short-term, reactive maintenance.
By focusing on clear strategic goals, facility managers can proactively enhance operations throughout the year, keeping their educational facilities in prime condition for students and teachers. In this article, we’ll explore 11 strategic facilities management goals to keep your educational facility running smoothly.
Why Your Facilities Management Strategy Needs Clear Goals
Setting strategic goals streamlines decision-making for your facilities management team and simplifies resource allocation. Key reasons to establish clear strategic goals include:
- Ensuring operational efficiency and alignment with strategic objectives. Well-defined strategic goals help align your facility management strategy with your organization’s broader academic objectives, supporting the institution and preventing wasted resources.
- Driving continuous improvement. As you achieve each strategic goal, having the next one ready provides a clear path for ongoing progress.
- Enhancing overall facility performance. With a structured plan and consistent progress throughout the year, your facility’s overall performance will naturally improve.
Your goals serve as a roadmap for achieving measurable results. A comprehensive facilities management strategy allows you to optimize maintenance schedules, ensuring essential work is completed while handling any unexpected day-to-day issues.
Goal-setting also promotes cost-efficiency by prioritizing the most critical tasks within your facility. By focusing on goal-oriented tasks and deprioritizing those that are less relevant, you can streamline your facility planning and avoid creating busy-work for stakeholders. This efficient approach enables your facilities management team to enhance the work environment for teachers and administrators, as well as the learning environment for students.
Main Objectives of Facilities Management
Before delving into specific school facility management goals, it’s important to outline the key tasks, responsibilities, and initiatives they’re connected to.
Maintaining & Optimizing School Facilities
This is the north star for all school facility managers. K-12 maintenance teams are evaluated on their ability to keep school infrastructure well-maintained and safe for teachers, students, and staff. This focus ensures that teams allocate time in their busy schedules for upcoming maintenance projects.
Streamlining Maintenance Operations
This is one of the biggest challenges facility teams face daily—especially those with small teams or in large school districts. That said, streamlining facility maintenance processes is vital for the success of your maintenance program. Without efficient processes, even the best plans can falter. Schools may deplete their budgets as projects extend and functionality declines, leading to delays, increased maintenance and operating costs, and more downtime.
Efficient work order management systems enable real-time updates, streamlining the distribution process. Facilities team members receive work orders based on their skills, specialities, availability, and the task’s priority. It’s a significant upgrade from less sophisticated, email-based request systems.
Supporting K-12 Students, Faculty, and Staff
Supporting K-12 students, faculty, and staff is considered a core responsibility of every school facility manager, as it directly impacts the learning environment and overall educational experience. Establishing clear communication channels can alleviate tension between busy maintenance staff and concerned K-12 parents. By keeping parents informed about upcoming repairs or maintenance activities, you can reassure them of their children’s safety on school grounds.
Improving Project Management
School facility managers are also responsible for identifying and planning maintenance projects throughout the academic year. These projects can range from replacing outdated HVAC systems to making renovations or allocating space for upcoming work. Creating a clear project plan not only makes achieving specific goals and KPIs more feasible but also helps systematize routine maintenance tasks for your teams.
This approach improves service delivery by establishing a process for prioritizing projects. As proactive maintenance tasks are scheduled and completed throughout the year, it helps prevent system breakdowns and disruptions. Ultimately, the entire system functions more efficiently when facility management goals are well-defined and consistently followed.
Keeping Inventories Up to Date
Even with skilled maintenance teams, operations can grind to a halt without proper equipment or parts. Facility managers must track maintenance assets to ensure their teams are always well-equipped. Without a dedicated asset management platform, facility teams can quickly lose track of their inventory, hampering their ability to complete maintenance projects efficiently.
Challenges in Facilities Management
When working to achieve the goals listed below, there are a few challenges that K-12 facility management leaders frequently face.
Controlling Costs
Like other K-12 leaders, school facility managers are accountable for their district’s bottom line. They can keep their department’s overall operating costs in check by closely monitoring expenses related to labor, equipment, and general facility maintenance.
However, it’s crucial to remember that cost control shouldn’t compromise broader strategic goals. Maintenance cost savings should instead stem from effective facility management and smart resource allocation.
Extending Asset Lifespans
School districts invest heavily in keeping their campuses well-equipped and modern for both teaching and learning. To avoid sunk costs and wasted school budgets, facility managers must regularly audit the condition of school assets and perform timely maintenance.
Organizing Workflows
An optimized facility management workflow reduces labor costs by minimizing time spent on maintenance tasks. School facility managers need to establish a smooth, end-to-end work order process to keep pace with school repairs. Optimizing workflows also simplifies decision-making when prioritizing maintenance projects throughout the year.
Optimizing Work Order Processes
Creating open and effective communication channels between maintenance teams and requestors is just as challenging as it is necessary. K-12 facility managers must implement or adopt a system that simplifies the work order submission process for all parties involved.
Staying Informed on Facility Management Trends
As facility management best practices evolve, it’s vital to stay informed about recent trends, including technology for facility management, software tools, and sustainability practices. Networking with peer leaders and attending industry events allows facility managers to learn about beneficial trends that support goals of increased efficiency, reduced costs, improved sustainability, and enhanced safety across their school facilities.
Tips for Setting Facilities Management Goals
While the process of setting and implementing effective school facilities management goals differs for each facility, these best practices apply to most organizations and most situations.
- Align strategic goals with broader organizational efforts. Your organization likely has overarching objectives to achieve. Maybe your school needs more classrooms due to growth, or it’s focusing on enhancing its arts programs. Seize the opportunity to align your facility objectives with these broader strategic goals.
- Involve all stakeholders. Form a committee of facilities managers, teachers, administrators, and board members. Involving all stakeholders ensures that everything from preventive maintenance to renovations will meet the needs of the larger organization.
- Implement metrics to measure success. Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) to effectively measure progress and success.
- Prioritize each goal. Establish a priority level for each goal to structure your facility management strategy. Determine the sequence: What’s first, second, third? What should be tackled if there’s leftover budget?
- Create a realistic budget. Collaborate with committees to allocate funds for each major project or to set an overall budget for all facilities management initiatives.
- Establish a timeline. Set a timeframe for your strategic facilities management plan. Plan to create a new strategy when the current one expires.
- Share the goals with stakeholders. After finalizing the plan, compile a report to communicate these goals to all stakeholders.
- Create a system of accountability. Demonstrate continuous improvement by conducting regular progress checks. Issue periodic progress reports or reconvene with the committee regularly.
11 Strategic Facility Management Goals for K-12 Leaders
Having outlined the responsibilities and challenges of K-12 facility management, let’s now delve into the strategic goals that will drive your maintenance teams’ success. We recommend facility managers develop SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based—for the following key initiatives.
1. Ensure Building Safety & Security
The first and most important goal of a facility manager is creating a safe school that supports everyone’s well-being. That means overseeing the upkeep of buildings and grounds, identifying potential hazards, and completing timely repairs and replacements of faulty equipment.
Strategic planning is critical to establishing and maintaining a healthy learning and work environment. Think about how you can continue to enhance your facilities moving forward, allocating resources and maintenance team members to jobs that provide long-term value. This might include installing new security cameras, repairing broken playground structures, or upgrading an outdated water or air filtration system.
2. Prioritize Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
Maintaining school facilities is part of the job, but an effective maintenance team understands that the work doesn’t stop there. Facility managers should be thinking of new ways to improve the performance and efficiency of school workspaces and infrastructure.
For starters, you can set goals to approach facility management tasks like replacing school assets, landscaping, and making repaits more sustainably to decrease your energy consumption, prioritize sustainable practices, and cut costs. These automations also play a huge role in energy sustainability and allow maintenance teams to extend the lifespan of their HVAC systems,lighting fixtures, and other important school infrastructure.
3. Improve Space Utilization
Effective space utilization and management is another effective way to get the most out of your school facilities. It is often overlooked as a low-priority task but plays a huge role in the daily operations of a K-12 school.
When reviewing the ground plans for school buildings, it’s important to keep your peers in mind. Open walkways, stairwells, emergency exit doors, and common areas make it possible for students, teachers, and staff to travel safely on school campuses. Facility managers should consistently monitor the use of space in their schools to avoid unnecessary foot traffic.
4. Streamline Facility Maintenance Processes
Improving your internal facility management processes will reduce outstanding work orders for your maintenance teams. To enhance internal processes, facility managers should:
- Keep accurate service and maintenance records of district assets
- Filter work order requests by location, type, equipment needed, priority, etc.
- Schedule preventive maintenance of school assets in advance
- Give K-12 teachers and staff a dedicated portal to submit work orders
- Communicate with maintenance technicians via mobile app or chat threads
- Maintain an updated school facility safety checklist
Using facility management software to optimize processes enables you to gather actionable feedback through analytics and metrics. Generate reports to track work order completion times, SLA adherence, task durations, and more.
5. Increase Focus on Preventive Maintenance
Creating a preventive maintenance schedule is one of the most effective ways to extend the lifespan of your district assets. Preventive maintenance gives busy K-12 facility management teams the ability to avoid equipment breakdowns due to negligence or irregular maintenance. In a preventive maintenance model, school technicians are required to keep district assets and infrastructure well-maintained and safe for students.
Making the shift to a preventive model also helps facility management leaders achieve goals, such as:
- Effective scheduling and reduced downtime for technicians
- Increased asset and equipment lifespans via regular maintenance
- Longer time frames between replacing existing equipment
- Updated equipment and spare parts inventory by scheduling work orders ahead of time
One of the biggest benefits to adopting a preventive maintenance model is that it requires little to no investment upfront. School facility managers can improve their project management skills and the effectiveness of their teams without having to make huge operational changes overnight.
6. Ensure Regulatory Compliance
Operational efficiency and safety aren’t the only things on a facility manager‘s mind. They’re also trying to prevent compliance violations that could result in financial penalties. Following established processes is one way to make sure that your facility meets state-determined safety measures.
For example, some states require schools to keep their entrance doors locked during the day. Regularly inspecting locking mechanisms prevents the school from inadvertently violating this regulation and putting students in harm’s way. Likewise, many school health statutes include requirements for indoor air quality. Properly maintaining and repairing HVAC systems is critical to preventing the air quality from degrading, which increases student illnesses and could result in an expensive fine.
7. Maintain Asset Service Histories
Facilities teams that regularly review service histories and stay aware of assets reaching the end of their lifespans are able to keep assets longer and reduce purchasing costs. As a facilities manager, you should keep track of expected equipment lifespans, their current operational status, and any deviations between actual and expected timelines. Speak with maintenance teams who service the equipment to gain qualitative feedback and assess the true condition of your school’s assets and equipment.
8. Reduce Maintenance Costs
School facility managers would have a much easier job if they had an unlimited budget to work with. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Keeping costs low and staying above the bottom line is another key goal K-12 facility leaders should try to achieve. Here are a few strategies to prioritize cost savings in your district.
- Invest in upgrading older equipment. Preventive maintenance is a great way to expand the lifespan of assets that are early in their asset lifespan. Still, it’s usually too late for older equipment to see any real benefit.
- Schedule technician shifts to reduce labor costs. Whether you have maintenance workers on-site or contract them externally, setting up detailed maintenance schedules allows facility managers to save time and reduce labor costs. You can then work these reduced costs into your school budget planning for the following year to see how you’re realizing cost savings in your district.
- Review vendor relationships for parts, equipment, and CMMS software. Take the time to review your vendor relationships every school year. Then, cut costs on expensive parts manufacturers or additional software that isn’t adding value to your facility operations.
9. Improve or Maintain Communication Channels
At times, you may need to communicate with K–12 students, parents, faculty, and staff to inform them of upcoming maintenance and repairs or provide in-the-moment emergency alerts. A school campus can quickly turn into a construction site when something breaks down. Maintaining regular communication with stakeholders within your K–12 community will keep them informed of upcoming maintenance that could affect their daily schedules.
10. Build Vendor/Supplier Relationships
In case of an emergency repair at your school or district, you’ll need to know immediately who can handle the job swiftly, efficiently, and within budget.
To this end, facilities managers should establish connections with vendors and suppliers across all areas of facilities management. Aim to build relationships and negotiate predetermined rates for most services when possible. Maintain a readily accessible directory of approved vendors along with their contact details.
11. Increase Team Collaboration
Clear and consistent communication is the key to a successful and efficient maintenance team. Enhancing collaboration with additional communication channels and digital records reduces miscommunications that could lead to costly errors or repeated repairs.
Collaboration also contributes to a healthier work environment with higher morale and more engaged team members. Employees with good communication are more likely to have a positive outlook on their job and their coworkers, which makes them more motivated and productive.
Implementing Your Facility Goals with Incident IQ
At Incident IQ, we’ve developed a service platform that connects facilities leaders with other K-12 departments that are crucial to carrying out school operations. Using our school facility management software, facility leaders can plan, organize, and achieve their goals with tools built specifically for K-12.
Ready to streamline your facility management operations? Speak with one of our K-12 workflow management experts to learn more.
