Performance management and sustainability

Understand how to use data to measure the performance of your estate, encourage sustainability and manage energy and water use.

Performance management of your estate

Performance management of the estate and benchmarking is the measurement and monitoring of property-related performance. This will help you to improve the efficiency of the estate.

Measuring the performance of the estate will help you understand:

  • how the property assets in the estate contribute to the overall performance of your organisation
  • how each individual asset in the estate is performing against technical criteria

Benchmarking is a way of using relative performance to learn from others in an effort to improve. This will include comparison with other organisations or industry standards, and comparison of individual property assets within the estate.

Importance of performance management of the estate

Accountability for financial performance sits at board level. Understanding the performance of the estate and using it to challenge and demonstrate value for money is an important element of accountability.

Performance management of the estate will:

  • enable you to monitor and evaluate how property assets are performing to meet the needs of your organisation
  • provide a reference point to support future strategies and value for money decisions
  • provide a mechanism for internal and for external benchmarking

Benchmarking is not a one off exercise. It can help:

  • lock your organisation into a cycle of continuous improvement
  • develop a culture where it is easier to question the norm and make changes

Who should be responsible

Responsibility for performance management of the estate should sit with an executive leader. They should also be responsible for reporting performance.

They should understand what the executive leadership team and the board want to know about the estate and identify performance measures accordingly. The actual collation and management of the data used to deliver performance reports is likely to be the responsibility of operational staff.

You should use standardised reporting formats where possible to enable better understanding of data needs and performance over time.

The executive leadership team may help identify other benchmarking organisations which may be willing partners. For schools with a religious character, this should be done in collaboration with the trustees of the school and the diocese or other religious authority.

What to consider

You should consider what you want to measure to help you:

  • manage the estate strategically
  • assess value for money

Do not make this too complicated. It’s more important to start the process rather than trying to make it too comprehensive from the start.

You should then make sure:

  • you identify appropriate performance criteria so that you can set targets
  • your targets are clearly linked to your strategic goals and the requirements of the trustees of the school
  • you choose measures which are useful to your school and organisation

You might want to limit this to 5 key measures. Having a small number of useful measures is preferable to having numerous measures that do not provide meaningful information.

Financial

Consider:

  • your running costs – calculation of all property occupancy costs as a total cost per square metre or as a proportion of total school expenditure
  • capital projects – capital cost per square meter or pupil place, proportion of projects delivered to time or cost targets

Condition and maintenance

Consider:

  • the condition of your estate – categorisation against industry standard condition (A to D) and prioritisation (1 to 4) categories by percentage of estate in each category
  • maintenance needs – assessment of maintenance need per square metre, average spend per square metre, by planned to reactive proportion

Find out more about condition surveys.

Space

Consider doing an assessment of the utilisation of space by reference to space (square metre) per pupil, the frequency of use and how the space is used.

Find guidelines for:

Environmental sustainability

Consider:

  • energy consumption – calculation of energy consumption by reference to the area of the building
  • environmental impact – assessment of emissions per area of building

Risk

Consider your statutory compliance – measurement of the proportion of the estate which is compliant or non-compliant.

Track your performance

Once you’ve decided what you’re going to measure you need to identify:

  • what data you will need
  • how you can gather the data
  • how you will analyse the data

Establish a baseline position. Without this, it is not possible to identify any changes in performance.

Use how you perform against targets to define priorities for works and estates activities.

Refine your performance measures over time as your approach to strategic estate management matures, and more data becomes available.

Collecting performance data

Collecting data can be time consuming and costly. The benefits of identified performance measures must justify the cost and effort of collating, analysing and reporting.

You should assess what data is already collected. You may be able to use this to start with and build on it over time.

Identify performance measures that meet the needs of your organisation. Be realistic about:

  • what data can be collected and analysed
  • whether this can be done in a timescale to enable meaningful action

Benchmarking

Understanding your performance internally is only part of the picture.

Benchmarking with other bodies or organisations can help you identify areas for improvement. It’s only through external comparison that it is possible to determine how your organisation is performing in a wider context.

Benchmarking is only a guide. There may be valid reasons why some schools are at the lower or upper extremes of the data range. You should understand the reasons. You may not be in a position at the outset to benchmark externally. Begin once your estate performance management processes are embedded and more data is available.

You may want to identify potential benchmarking groups or partner organisations. You can:

  • find out what performance criteria they’re measuring
  • possibly use some of their findings to set your own targets

There may be existing localised, regional or national benchmarking groups.

You can benchmark some of your property measures against other organisations.

You could use Technical Annex 2H of the Generic Design Brief for benchmarking your energy use and perfomance. It sets out the required technical standards and performance criteria for energy in schools.

The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) offers an energy benchmarking tool for all building users.

For more information about performance measures used to help schools improve their financial management and efficiency review:

You could consider contacting peer organisations and discuss the potential to share information for mutual benefit. You may need the consent of trustees before sharing information.

Some MATs use business intelligence dashboards to support their work.

Example

EO Consulting has a dashboard that presents all types of condition, compliance and energy usage data so it can be:

  • appropriately aggregated
  • used to optimise return on capital investment decisions within estates and organisations

The Trust Network has case studies which provide further information.

Find out more about how to begin estate performance management and benchmarking.

Understanding energy and water use

Understanding your energy and water usage will help you maximise your resources and minimise waste.

Energy and water are valuable and costly resources. You should manage the estate to:

  • understand how much energy and water you use
  • reduce consumption
  • minimise waste

This section covers the practice of:

  • managing energy and water use
  • operating energy and water efficient buildings
  • looking for opportunities to deliver efficiencies through the estate
  • exploring collective buying opportunities

Importance of energy and water management

Energy and water are important resources and minimising their use supports more sustainable schools for all pupils and staff.

Revenue spend on energy and water can significantly affect your budget and is one of the areas where savings can be made through good estate management. If energy unit costs increase in the future as predicted, savings could also increase.

Understanding how energy is used and identifying opportunities for efficiencies will enable lower energy consumption, reduced operating cost and a lower carbon footprint.

Typically, good energy and water management can save 10% to 30% of the energy and water costs for a school.

Managing energy and water usage

A proactive approach to energy management can help you:

  • understand the true cost of your energy and water consumption
  • understand areas of high energy usage and address these
  • create a system for collection and monitoring energy and water data
  • make sure that the estate is as energy and water efficient as possible
  • take advantage of opportunities to access sources of funding for energy efficiencies
  • coordinate energy efficiencies with other construction projects and wider strategic objectives
  • understand future resource requirements
  • get value for money
  • support building users to implement energy efficient practices
  • identify leaks and failing equipment that could endanger pupils and staff

To achieve these benefits:

  • executive leaders should actively support energy and water management
  • you should proactively manage energy and water consumption
  • allocate responsibilities for energy and water management
  • monitor and agree targets for energy and water consumption
  • develop business cases for all potential cost-effective energy and water saving measures to enable quick payback from investment opportunities
  • allocate budgets for the implementation of energy and water measures
  • review utility purchasing and tariffs regularly against actual consumption
  • take advantage of financial incentives to employ more energy efficient plant and equipment

Reducing energy and water use

Produce an energy and water management plan

You should produce an energy and water management plan that:

  • sets out required performance in terms of energy consumption within the estate with short and long term goals
  • identifies patterns and areas of poor performance for further investigation
  • identifies any planned or reactive maintenance that impact energy or water consumption
  • explores opportunities to procure energy utilities more efficiently
  • seeks funding options within the industry, such as Salix and Re:fit funding, to implement cost effective improvements

Make sure that all maintenance and improvement works consider the impact on energy consumption. This includes the whole-life costs and issues associated with any plant and equipment.

To do this you should understand:

  • your current energy and water consumption
  • the condition of your buildings and their remaining life
  • the hours of use and third party use of facilities
  • how to monitor the savings achieved and compare with predicted savings

For more information, see our tips to reduce energy and water use in schools.