A Bad Couple of Days

Well a couple of weeks back we had the swings, so this week we got the roundabouts.

On Thursday we met with the independent solicitors who have been engaged to act on the part of the schools. It's really comforting to have them there, but the amount of ground that needs to be covered before financial close just feels overwhelming. We were looking at the Governors' Agreement, which in itself is quite a small document. The problem is that it refers to four other documents, and the clear advice from the solicitors is that someone from the school needs to be familiar with the contents of these documents. Unlike the Governors' Agreement these documents will not be small, and the person who will need to be familiar with these documents is me. The solicitors will also be reading them and providing us with a commentary, so that's useful, but there's no getting around the fact that they'll need to be read.

Friday was a very full day of BSF meetings. In the morning we carried on with the 1:1 meetings with Heads of Department. The idea is that we look at the spaces allocated and the ICT/Equipment requirements for each area of the school. This was the second set of meetings (we'll have at least one more set). The first set went pretty smoothly but now we're starting to hit a couple of problems. I'm pretty sure that no department will be worse off than they are at the moment. They all should have the same number of spaces, and they'll be newly kitted out and completely refurbished. The thing is that firstly some people had hoped for much more and that secondly there will be a huge amount of disruption while we get there. I'm going to have to draft someone in to make decision on whose need is the greatest in terms of curriculum needs.

In the afternoon a cast of thousands (including the Chair and incoming Head) turned up for the weekly Design and Build meeting. By the end of the meeting I was feeling pretty glum. The good news was that:

• planning's been submitted.
• decant and phasing plans are better than they were.
• there's a plan called the "Governors' Scheme" that covers almost everything we'd want.

The bad news was that:

• the Corten elevations are going to cost around £236,000 more than there is in the budget. The thought of revisiting the elevations is thoroughly depressing to me and, no doubt, to the architects and anyway these are the elevations that have been submitted for planning. No-one's quite sure what will happen. We'll find out next week.
• I'm still not happy with the landscaping. It's an area that has been much neglected. We had a great meeting with the student design group and, to me, their input was almost completely ignored.
• it seems some of the Department Heads may have a struggle on their hands to get their rooms kitted out in the way they've requested. Again, I think I need a curriculum "referee", and quickly.
• the "Governors Scheme", which offers 100% accessibility and changing rooms where we want them amongst other desirable things, will cost over £250k more than there is in the budget. Again, who knows what the answer will be to this.
• the decant and phasing plans that appear at first glance to be workable will result in an increase in temporary accommodation which again will cost rather more than budgeted for. Money that you by now will have figured out isn't there.
• there's a huge amount of work to do on the rooms data sheets (which itemise what will be in every single room of the building and need to be thoroughly checked).
• there's a huge amount of work to do generally! Financial close by December 19th seems impossible. My life seems swamped by BSF, and I'm sure it would be impossible to underestimate how much work everyone else involved is putting in.

After over 8 solid hours in BSF meetings I was feeling very huffy by the end of Friday. I blame a lot of this on the BSF process itself, of which more later. That's quite enough grumbling for now. Let's hope next week's better.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 16/11/07 - Thirteen