Blogging Schools for the Future

Some Good News

2009-10-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

It's really nice to bring some good news as opposed to the low level grumbling I often seem to find myself writing. Today we heard that the school has been shortlisted in two PfS Excellence in BSF Awards categories: Best Refurbished School and Most Inspirational OutsideSpace. In addition, Jestico and Whiles (our architects) has been shortlisted for Best Client Design Advisor for their work in Newham.

Looking back over my blog I think I have been consistently high in my praise for Jestico & Whiles, so obviously think the nominations are well deserved. The winners are announced on November 12th, so fingers crossed for them and also, I guess, us.

If you are interested in looking around our award nominated facilities, we are holding a Drop-in event on 20 October between 4.30 and 6pm (last tour at 5.30), so come along for a guided tour, a cup of tea and a flapjack. Anyone is welcome.

In other news, things are settling down after the chaos at the beginning of the term, and plans are already beginning for the third and final decant next May/June. I suspect decants must be like childbirth with memories of the pain diminishing as time goes by. Many of the problems we faced with ICT and facilities are now under control, and the focus at present is establishing how services will run on an ongoing basis. FM has had about 5 months to establish itself (though much still needs to be resolved on contractual division of duties), but the ICT service really feels as if everything has just been thrown up in the air and we're waiting to see how the bits land. If nothing else it has made me:

a) realise I neither knew nor cared about toners, cables, bulbs, white-board pens etc. I now need to know lots about them and am climbing a steep slope of learning.
b) appreciate how much we took for granted.

Hmm. That's beginning to sound like low-level grumbling. I'll stop now.

2009-09-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to report that the Big Move is complete and the school is pretty much settled in. The summer break was far from relaxing for those of us on site who spent hours and wore out a great deal of shoe leather trying to get the building right. The premature departure of two people from the Local Education Partnership who should have been very involved in the move was extremely unfortunate to say the least, and yet again too much responsibility fell on school staff to get things right. The summer also brought into sharp relief the problems with the BSF programme's drive to fix things that aren't broken (or are just slightly frayed around the edges). This was exacerbated, I believe, by resourcing issues due to so many areas of the country going live with BSF at once. Some key aspects of provision are still not right, and some areas of the curriculum are being significantly affected by that.

The first paragraph sounds a bit sulky and negative, and it would of course be naive to expect a big move to go ahead without any problems at all. People are working hard to address the problems and things seem to get a little better each day.

There are also many positives. The building has been really well received by staff and students alike. The rooms are spacious, the colours look great and you really can't see where old and new join. Even the core-ten cladding's mellowing rapidly. Some of the staff teams are absolutely chuffed to bits with what they've got, and everyone's better off than they were. Ironically most of the teams who are now in temporary accommodation also have better facilities than they had last year as the unrefurbished part of the school grew more and more dingy and depressing as each month went by last year. The new areas seem to have had a really positive affect on students and the atmosphere seems a lot more calm than it did previously.

Over the past few weeks I have shown round students plus parties from Essex, Newham and Hertfordshire schools who are about to enter BSF (many of whom apparently read this blog, so "hello and thank-you" to them). Even when I'm having a rotten day, as soon as I start showing people around I realise how proud of the whole thing I am, and what a great job's been done on the building. I hope seeing the building and hearing about our experience has been helpful for them too.

We're well over the half way stage now. In May '10 we have our next and final Big Move, and then the school will be landscaped for full handover in September '10. A lot of the planning for the works that are currently taking place has happened so things should get a lot easier from here on in. I won't know what to do with myself.

On October 20th we will be having an Open Evening for anyone who wants to come and have a look around. I'll put more details up here once we've fine tuned the programme, but if you're interested in seeing the school put a note in your diary now. You might even get a free glass of wine and a cheesy football or two.

The Really Big Move

2009-07-11T02:25:00.000-07:00

Packing for the really big move officially began on Friday, although unofficially staff have been packing for days now. The arrival of 1,000 crates on 1 July made it feel very real. The move is an enormous logistical exercise. Virtually every room moves either into the new block or out of the old block into temporary accommodation, with the added complication of some rooms changing function (e.g. from general classroom to science lab or office). The Science Technicians have drawn up an enormous list of chemicals in need of disposal, most of which I've never heard of, and are labelled with frightening attributes such as "corrosive", "toxic" and "explosive". I'm curious about what the "unknown solid" might be.

Friday was good humoured, despite the lack of labels, bin bags, crate seals, bubble wrap and cages for the multitude of odd shaped items in art and music. Amazingly, despite half the school packing, we managed to re-room and cover all the lessons and theoretically had a whole school in. Early next week we should finish off the task of labelling every single stick of furniture as either move, leave, store or throw away. Only complete junk will be thrown, and I'm pleased to say a lot of the old furniture, much of which is wooden and installed in 1969, will be shipped of to a school in Cameroon. It's amazing how attached some people are to certain pieces of furniture, and I've felt so cruel telling them they can't have it in the new building. The wooden desks seem to particularly inspire fierce loyalty. I've decided it's definitely best to label things unobserved.

Recently I've had dreams that I don't need an analyst to explain. A couple of nights ago I dreamt the wrong type of chair was delivered. Last night I dreamt the builders ran out of grey carpet tiles, so were forced to use brown 70's splash patterned carpet. I'm looking forward to this all being over so I can get back to dreaming about my teeth falling out or missing a flight.

Not the Last Post

2009-06-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's looked in on the site since October 2008 will have spotted... well, absolutely nothing. I had been doing so well, making a point of blogging regularly. I'd even been getting visitors and comments, so what happened?

In one of my last posts I made reference to the fact that we still hadn't reached financial close. Financial close finally happened in November, almost a year after the first projected date. Getting there was tough and bad-tempered, a process complicated by the fact that as well as climbing a paperwork mountain, we were also trying to do things that would usually happen post-FC, but that couldn't wait because building work was well under way. I cannot start to tell you the hours spent on small power, windows, room layouts, key strategies and CCTV, to mention just a few things. This blog is something I do out of hours, and the thought of coming home and writing about something that was frying my brain during the working day was not something I relished, so it kind of ground to a halt. And then someone put a big fat BSF blog button on the new SNS website, so I took the less than subtle hint and here we are.

So, what's happened since my last post? The simple answer is lots. The ever rolling cast of people involved in BSF continues to roll, although it seems to have stabilised of late. Luckily some key characters have remained in place throughout and an honourable mention must go to the builders & architects. In May our Premises Team moved over to the new company, a shift that went suprisingly well even for the staff involved. In lots of ways it has lightened my load as I was reponsible for many of the things that have been transferred over, and the woman who runs the help desk (apparently it's her on her own in a huge barn built with future expansion in mind!) is genuinely very helpful.

Most importantly the first phase of building is almost complete, and plans are well under way for an enormous move in July. Virtually every space moves either into the new area of the building, or out into temporary accommodation ready for the next phase. The builders are throwing tradesfolk (metaphorically) at the site to get it completed in time. Furniture and ICT have been ordered and it's just a nail biting wait to see whether we got it right. Yesterday we started training for the new ICT network. ICT remains an area we are still not entirely at ease with. It would be unfair to say that access to ICT won't widen in September, but the pot of money doesn't really seem to have stretched that far and there are aspects of the solution that we are still not happy with or unclear about. On the plus side, we will be retaining our Network Manager, which we hadn't expected, and working with RM has become a much more positive experience since contracts were signed.

I'm really looking forward to getting in to the new block. Morale amongst staff has been pretty low this year, and I hope that moving in will make them feel it was all worth it. I took the student design group around a couple of weeks ago, and they were really excited. They obviously enjoyed seeing the things they had worked on, but little things like running between classrooms to hear the difference acoustic panels makes also seemed to give them great pleasure. And ultimately they're the ones we're doing this all for.

Something Interesting

2008-10-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

Here's something Nick found on the internet the other night. I don't know why he was doing this in his spare time, but it's an interesting find. Quite how they crammed that number of students on to the site I don't know, but I guess there were at least 30 in every class, where we now have lower numbers (20ish) in practical subjects.

Clissold Park School

Re-typing of a newspaper article, (date and provenance unknown) in the files of the Planning Dept. It is yellowed and incomplete. Probably about 1960

Full details of the new Clissold Park School, which is being built in Clissold Road, Stoke Newington, were released at a press conference held in the old school in Palatine Road last Friday. Boys and girls from the present upper and lower schools will move into the new building in September.

The £1 million pound school will accommodate 1723 pupils as opposed to the present 1000 crammed into the present buildings, where some classes have to be taken in a converted cloakroom. The sixth form will be expanded from 90 to about 225, and the range of facilities is exceptionally wide.

Alternatives

The new school will offer its senior pupils many alternatives to sports and games, and the emphasis is very much on the arts. To this end a large multi-purpose theatre with room for up to 200 is being built, as well as the games hall at the other end of the building which covers 6,500 square feet.
Clissold Park School will be one of the first schools to dispense with the traditional assembly hall. Instead, there are various smaller halls, and the sixth form will have two common rooms and a coffee bar. The central feature of the groups of three-storey buildings is an 18 foot wide concourse running right through where the old Church Walk used to be.
At last Friday's conference, the headmaster, Mr. T. C. Willcocks, spoke of the wide range of subjects available to his pupils, and he said that 61 % of them were immigrants – of 26 nationalities and speaking 21 languages. They were encouraged to take “A” levels in their own languages.

Improve

Mr. Willcocks felt that the school's curriculum would improve in its new premises, and he also expected that the present ”work preparation” scheme – whereby pupils on go to work at local firms for short periods in order to see how they are suited for the jobs they want – will be expanded. As far as social services are concerned, he said that an old people's home was just nearby, and there was room for further activity in that direction.
Mr. G. Stillman, of Stillman and Eastwick Field, the architects, said that the new school was “like a university college, with different forms of buildings all about three storeys high”.

A bit of a cheat

2008-10-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

The push to get us to financial close continues to be a bit all consuming, but I'm determined to keep on bloggin'. One of the things I've been charged with doing is keeping staff abreast of developments. We have started a fortnightly BSF staff group, and the minutes of this are circulated, but on alternate weeks I've agreed to send out a building update. I thought I'd post this week's update to give you a small flavour of life on half a building site. I promise I won't make a habit of this.

"Firstly just to let you know that the builders will be using this Thursday pm and Friday to make a whole heap of noise, so please be aware and arrange to keep away from the site borders for interviews etc.

Over half term some major, major works will take place (e.g. staircase removal) which will literally make the whole building shake, the effects of which can be described by people who were around over the summer. Please do not arrange any activities in the school main building for that week. It should be OK to go in the temporary classrooms, but please notify Dionne or the Schoolkeepers if that is what you plan to do. There will be excavation around the L block, so this will be completely out of bounds. The sixth form loos will be inaccessible to students during lesson time from half-term onwards as the D stairs will be coming out.

The second generator will be arriving Thursday pm and installed on Friday & Saturday. There may be a need to take electricity down on Friday, but we really hope this won’t be necessary.

Electricity will need to come off in the main block this Friday from 4pm. This will mean that the network will also come down and not be available again until Saturday.

The frame for the new block will be delivered during w/c 20th October and will be installed over the following 2 weeks. The concrete will be poured for the ground floor slabs on Friday.

The area on the boundary of the building works has suffered particularly from noise, although there is an agreement that there should only be low-level noise during lesson time. One of the main causes is the need to punch through floors/ceilings to create spaces for the risers that will contain the new services. Apparently there is a large amount of structural intervention needed in this area.

Over the next few days there will be localised drilling around the 6th form study area, which is necessary in order to prepare for the new block being attached to it. This should be outside of lesson time only. The wooden partition will soon be replaced with a wall, which will considerably improve acoustic separation.

Further works to improve the whiteboard installation in the temporary classrooms will take place on Thursday & Friday.

I will be trying to get to see Heads of Department/Faculty about room layouts over the next few days. For phase 2 departments I need agreement about the teaching wall only. The rest of the room layout follows from that."

Anything that can go wrong.

2008-09-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

Well I hadn't realised how long it's been since I posted. Where did the summer go?

My excuse is that I waited for most of the holidays for something to happen, only to be assaulted by a flurry of activity of a fraught nature at the beginning of September. Anyone involved in school support services will know how awful the beginning of the academic year can be. You can plan for the predictable, but you're just waiting for the unpredictable to happen. If you put major building works into the mix, then you have a noxious cocktail of possibilities.

Before I begin the list I want to say the builders continue to be great and just swoop in and sort things as quickly as they can even if it's not really to do with them. They must dread my name coming up on their mobiles. Without them dealing with things so efficiently and with astonishingly good humour, the start of term would have been doubly as bad, which is a very scary thought. The builders have decided that the site is indeed cursed - a conclusion Nick the Network Manager came to a couple of summers back. And just to compound Nick's always being right-ness, they have also discovered that anything you touch on a Friday just breaks.

In the first two weeks we had:

Electricity & network service missing in certain sections of the "old building".
Generator failure for unrelated reasons on three occasions, each of which left us without power or networks in the new block for around three hours. (including last Friday) You don't realise how much modern teaching relies on electricity until this happens. The teachers were having to be very creative. I suggested to the Economics teacher he should do the Winter of Discontent.
Problems with water supply resulting in no toilet facilities or drinking water for exactly the staff team you wouldn't want without drinking water or toilet facilities. (last Friday)
Major demolition on the site boundaries causing noise so loud the teachers couldn't be heard.
Problems in the temporary reprographics room because of the arrival of Autumn and the moisture that brings to a room full of paper with no electricity out of hours.
Ongoing issues with room allocations as a result of the decant. We've had to give up on a few solutions and take some drastic measures.
Very unpleasant difficulties with the drainage to the sixth form toilets. (last Friday)
Complete network failure totally unrelated to BSF and resulting in no network for a day and a half. Unfortunately this was at a completely separate time to the generator failure. At one stage it looked as if we'd have to have it repaired on a Friday afternoon, except the replacement switch got trapped in Amsterdam due to the fire in the Channel Tunnel.

Anyway, the good news is that things are far more settled now and no-one's shouted at me in the car park for a good few days. Always a good thing. As I've said before the staff are generally a laid back and cheerful bunch, so it just shows how tough a start of term it has been. Things are beginning to bite as we now have a full school and the onset of winter and moving into the new building still feels far away. It's a tribute to all concerned that the student guides at the Open Evening seemed completely relaxed about the whole thing, and prospective parents seemed far from put off by the building works.

Oh, and we still haven't reached financial close....

Anyway, I promise I will resume frequent and more positive posting activities now things are more settled. Sorry.

Summertime (and more pictures)

2008-07-31T09:22:00.000-07:00

We've finally reached the summer holidays. Unfortunately we haven't reached Financial Close, but I'm sure you're as bored of reading that sentence as I am of writing it.

The run up to the summer break is notoriously fraught as tempers get frayed due to rising temperatures and exhaustion. Post-decant living has added to the stress levels. I must be the only person in the UK who was relieved that we had a rotten summer, as that held complaints about the temporary accommodation overheating at bay.

In some ways it's an enormous relief when term ends and most of the regular school inhabitants troop off for the best part of six week, and you know they'll come back relaxed and more prepared for the slings & arrows of BSF, but anyone who thinks we sit around drinking tea throughout the summer obviously has no idea what schools are like at this time of year. Everything really swings into action in preparation for the new school year. Walls are painted, rooms are deep cleaned, stock is delivered and cupboards are cleared. Of course the pressure's off a bit particularly (ahem) if the server is off for the best part of a week leaving us 'phone and e-mail-less.

The builders are working full throttle to make the most of a student-free school to do drainage, piling and electrical works. They are pretty pleased to be doing "real building", so here are some freshly snapped pictures to show you what real building looks like. Apologies if I mis-identify anything.

I'm pretty sure these are drain parts.

Soon this will be deep, drain-shaped excavation.

This is the courtyard right outside the dining halls. In September this will be full of new drains and re-surfaced ready for the students to return.

This is what the front of the school looks like. This is about piling as well as drains.

Some piling earlier.

Nick took the last three photos as he was all hatted up and ready to enter the old building. Hard hats and flourescent jackets look mighty unpleasant things to wear on a hot and humid day. The photo above used to be the reception area and meeting rooms. It's been completely gutted and I was shocked when I saw how different it looked.

I thought this was a picture of the old server room until I stared at it harder and realised it's actually my old office. Take this to mean that it's unrecognisable.

Again, C23 really didn't used to look like this.

The Home Strait? (and some pretty pictures)

2008-07-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

The pressure's really on at the moment. MBE (formerly MPB and about to vanish and become the LEP aka "Hackney Schools for the Future") and the Hackney BSF Team have decided that Financial Close has to happen at the end of July/beginning of August, so we're working flat out. The committed reader of this blog will remember that Financial Close was originally scheduled for December 19th.

In order to get the school nearer to signing the Governing Body Agreement I have been taken off everything except for BSF, which is quite a commitment at this time of year. Documents and other paperwork are coming in thick and fast and e-mails are flying around at a rate of knots. With only four days to go until the Governing Body meeting there still seem to be a load of loose ends, so who knows what will happen.

Anyway, far more fascinating than contractual documentation are some pictures taken by the lovely (and much neglected by me) Sophie, including our temporary accommodation. I've also included a couple she took of the move, although that was a few weeks ago now. Note the vast improvement in my photo upload skills.

This wasn't even the end of the day. We completely ran out of skip space.

This actually looks pretty orderly. Amazingly almost everything got from a to b in one piece. As I said we had a great removal company, although I understand Clapton were very happy with theirs too.

This was the third delivery of crates. We needed a lot.

Arty view of the main admin block.

The lavvies.

The generators (and the Head).

One of the temporary classrooms.

And the door beneath my office. Comical sign not written by me.

Something Interesting on Edugeek

2008-06-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

At the risk of looking like I'm developing the habit of getting other people to write my posts for me, here's something I just spotted on Edugeek:

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/bsf/21419-school-set-refuse-14m-bsf-cash.html

I'll certainly be keeping an eye on progress here, as I'm sure will many others involved in BSF. If the school stands its ground and either pulls out or forces a change in ICT policy, there's a huge house of cards waiting to fall.

It's very hard to look the BSF Gift Horse in the mouth, but we have been close on a number of occasions. Handing our ICT over and losing our Network Manager (and eventually one other member of the ICT team) is the area that's always caused us the greatest concern. I think PfS know that many schools wouldn't do it willingly, which is why it is compulsory and would involve schools turning down millions of pounds of capital investment if they reject it. There have been times when we were really concerned that the proposed designs for the school didn't work and were poor value for money. We did some back of an envelope calculations and reckoned that over the 30 years of project life we would almost (but not quite) pay back all of the capital investment in additional ICT and FM costs.

Why didn't we pull out? The bottom line for us is that our roof hasn't been replaced in 40 years. Amazingly the week of the decant two ceilings finally gave up the ghost and bits of them caved in. Roof replacement alone was estimated at close to £1 million pounds. On top of that every winter when the heating gets turned on for the first time at least three of our very aged radiators leak. Half the radiators are stuck on or off so walking around the school is like wandering the many rooms of a spa treatment centre, but without the fluffy towels. Again, the heating system is as old as the school. I have no idea what replacement costs for the heating system would be, but it's going to be big money. Add to this the fact that some of the windows look as if they'd fall out if you sneeze in their direction (in fact on of the 6th form windows did fall in a while back) and the fact that anyone with a mobility problem can't make it past the reception and you can see the reason we're probably going to take the money. Despite all this I honestly think that, if the designs and other aspects of the project (including ICT proposals) hadn't improved, we would have pulled out and got the roof done by putting the school through a few years of financial hell.

Now for the rant, so feel free to skip a paragraph. If schools had proper capital investment over the past few decades, then we wouldn't be making this Faustian pact. A couple of times I've been told this is happening because schools don't direct their budgets properly. Unsurprisingly this makes me a little irate. Schools have only managed their own capital funding for around five years, which was never going to compensate for years of neglect. Just when we're sorting out our ICT networks, courtesy of specialist school ICT staff, and developing long-term capital plans, along comes BSF.

Now we still haven't signed up officially, despite half our school already been decanted/dug up/pulled to bits. There are still some pretty major concerns that need to be sorted out, and Governors won't sign the Governing Body Agreement until they are completely satisfied that they can live with what is being proposed. Hats off to the Head at Tollbar. It's a brave and bold move, but, if they hold firm, probably one someone needs to make. Presumably their school roof's not in imminent danger of caving in.

Management Speak

2008-06-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

I'm too depressed to post in length about the decant at the moment, so here's something rather more upbeat and another opportunity to get someone to do my post for me.

Thanks to my Step-Dad for forwarding me this link from the BBC. He knows management speak gives me hours of pleasure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7457287.stm

As you can imagine, we have come across many examples of this during two years of BSF. There are two of my particular pet hates listed here. During one Bidder Presentation I found myself idly tallying the number of times the phrase "going forward" was said, and reached double figures. The other example listed is "drilling down", unless we really are discussing drilling methodology, which occasionally could happen on this type of project and in which case it's an acceptable phrase. I daren't be too sneering, though, because I almost asked someone to send me something by "close of play Friday" only today, and I have written evidence that I've used the phrase in the past.

Other phrases I have come across during the project include "value engineering", i.e. cutting something out of the plans or making it out of something cheaper. We have lots of "solutions" e.g. a laptop trolley solution = a laptop trolley. I find the phrase "at this moment in time" odd. By the time the phrase has been said that particular moment in time has already passed.

There are occasionally rather fun phrases as well. One of the men from Wilmott Dixon refers to something that's not quite right with a building (e.g. bulges or hanging wires) as a "feature". When someone's going to be "open and honest" I know to brace myself for bad news. They are always open and honest, though!

My absolute favourite phrase, which I have already referred to in a previous post, remains the description of a mess of ICT cables as "a snakes wedding". I had to poke around in some pretty old meeting notes to find the best/worst example of management speak. It was the opening phrase in the first ever ICT meeting with one of the bidders, and we were told they wanted to work at a "high embryonic level". I suspect it's going to be difficult to top this one, but I'll keep my ears peeled just in case.

Lessons Learnt from the Big Move

2008-06-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

Well we're all in, although things are far from settled. My e-mail in-box is heaving and there's a very well-trodden path to my (rather cramped) office. Here are some tips on decant, some of which I did and some of which I wish I'd done.

"Like-for-like" is what schools should be offered for decant accommodation, but it's a rather woolly concept and you'll never really get exactly what you've left. As every penny spent on decant is a penny lost to the final building, you need to define exactly what like-for-like is and how flexible you're prepared to be.
If you feel too much is being crammed into too short a space of time, you're probably right. Ideally the temporary accommodation should be completed, then in goes the ICT network, then in goes the furniture and finally in goes the ICT. We did everything at once. It was bordering on chaos at times.
Be nice to each other, even when you're very near the end of your tether.
Have an individual conversation with each Team Leader involved in the room setting out exactly what they will be getting in temporary accommodation and the process for the move.
You really need to work through the plans of the building you're moving out of and check every single space to make sure someone "owns" it, and that it's got somewhere to go. We found departments who weren't really decanting had bits and pieces stored that needed moving/throwing away. Don't forget the cleaners cupboards. Oddly we didn't really have ownership of the staffroom, despite it belonging to everyone. This is now an area causing the most discontent amongst a usually very flexible staff and I have to confess I should have got the staff association on board earlier.
Negotiate timely and appropriate support from the LEP and Local Authority.
Ask for temporary accommodation with suited keys.
Work out the revised cleaning plans well in advance.
Get professionals to do room plans. I was very proud of my scale room plans, complete with cut-out scale desks, cupboards and filing cabinets. The professionals didn't look so impressed. Our Reprographics Technician, an ex-draughtswoman, did a tremendous job on her room plan and labelling and walked in to a room set out exactly as she had wanted it. Make staff do plans even if they don't think they want/need to.
Pay lots of attention to fixed shelving, benching and location of ICT ports and electrical sockets. Make sure you give this information to builders in a timely fashion and in an accessible format. Keep a close eye as these things go in.
No matter how hard you try, things will go wrong. Prepare staff for this and build in financial and time contingencies. You will probably need a few general grafters around for a good few days after the move.
Buy in lots of fans, extension cables and tape measures. Very few people labelled their bins so we are short of those as well.
Insist that staff label every single item to move, store or sling. Even if you tell them unlabelled things will be thrown away, you really need to make sure it's genuine rubbish rather than an oversight.
Don't sling furniture until you're sure you don't need it.
Don't store furniture that needs slinging.
Book a 3-week holiday over the decant period (OK, maybe this one's in the category of things I wish I'd done).

In fact, looking at the above it all could have been far, far worse, but I will definitely do a few things differently next time around.

On a separate note I've written an article on BSF for "School Financial Management", which has just been published. My family all reckon it'll turn up as one of the obscure publications on "Have I got News for You", but what do they know - I'm really proud! Welcome to anyone who's visiting this site via that article. I'd love to get some sort of informal School Business Manager networking site going (not just BSF related), and one of our Governors who sets this sort of thing up for a living has offered support with this. Contact me if it's something you'd be interested in.

The Big Move - Number One

2008-06-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

Well, we've kind of moved. The week before half term was spent packing, with the Friday being official packing day. Luckily a lot of the staff had started packing as soon as crates arrived the previous week, because by the morning of official packing day most of the crates had gone. The otherwise wonderful Harrow Green had seriously underestimated the amount of stuff that needed to be moved (I reckon some of the cupboards hadn't ever been cleared out), and an emergency delivery was made by lunchtime. In the interim the squirrel instincts of our Premises Manager also meant that we stumbled across a secret supply of spare crates that averted a disaster while we waited for delivery. The Year 7 students spent the day in a carnival workshop, which ended with them forming a procession outside the old block to say goodbye to it. They looked great in their recycled Loot newspaper costumes and it was a bit of welcome light relief from packing.

By 3.30pm on the Friday everyone who should have been packed was packed, and many of us were enjoying a "cold drink" supplied by the Head.

I managed to slip off on holiday for a few days at the beginning of the week and returned to find that everything had been hauled from one end of the school to the other, so I've spent the past few days fine tuning the furniture move. I'm knackered just from four days of running up and down stairs (with minimal lifting) so it's hats off to the removal folk. They just cracked on with everything, didn't once look huffy when I told them the filing cabinet in the far corner of a room behind 30 crates needed to be hoiked out and moved to another room, and even made me a cup of tea on Sunday. Many of them are based in Newcastle and apparently they come down to London as a team, work double shifts seven days a week for a fortnight and then go back home. Apparently this was a really tough job because of the number of staircases they have to navigate, so they're not too enchanted by the idea of doing the February move, but I'd be happy to have them back again.

Of course not everything's rosy in the garden....

To say the ICT is a bit of a nailbiter is an understatement. There are around five different sub-contractors involved in getting the ICT to work excuding RM and Wilmott Dixon. Some report to Wilmott Dixon and some to RM. The job of co-ordinating everything and trouble-shooting seems somehow to have fallen to our Network Manager who is not paid a daily rate for project management, and in fact works way over his hours and weekends unpaid on a regular basis. Part of the problem is that sorting out the ICT decant was fraught with problems and everything was left until the last minute. Contracts, contracts. Nick's been in all weekend, and at close of play today felt things were just about on track for providing an ICT service for students on Wednesday - but it's going to be a close run thing.

The admin offices are absolutely stuffed with crates. Some faces are going to drop tomorrow when they see what's been crammed into the new spaces. The new classrooms generally look fine, though, and the removal folk will be on hand for the next couple of days to sort out any problems.

We're having to run the new blocks from two generators, because our electricity usage was negotiated in 1969 and we're already over capacity. Painful negotiations are taking place to increase capapcity, but in the meantime it's generators and fuel deliveries. The generators are noisy. Following firm advice from ICT folk the ICT power was left running on Friday. On Saturday morning a local resident unsurprisingly and not unreasonably made a "strong point" to the builders, so the generators will have to go off every night. Getting them back up again and sequencing the ICT takes an hour every morning. We will need to find a workaround quickly because we need to be able to take phone calls from 7.30 onwards.

Tomorrow the staff return from half-term, so I'm bracing myself for an extremely busy couple of days, although I know we'll be supported by Nick, the builders and removal folk. We'll be having a post-mortem meeting next week and hopefully we can iron out a few of the glitches for the next big move (number two) in February.

Two Links

2008-05-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

A nice easy post for me. Here are two links.

The first links to the SNS website and a piece on brutalist architecture, which our school is a fine example of. The piece was written by a work experience placement student who was with us a few weeks ago.

http://www.sns.hackney.sch.uk/ourschool/architecture.htm

The second was forwarded to me by Nick, the Network Manager. It strikes a bit of a chord as we hurtle towards the ICT decant.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/09/bofh_2008_episode_17/

It's well worth poking around the website if you're a Teccy type and haven't come across it before.

Thanks to Calvin, Nick and The Register for writing my post for me this week. Far easier than trying to arrange photos.

In Goes our Temporary Accommodation

2008-04-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some pictures of the temporary accommodation going in. Watching this sort of thing in action is amazing. It's the most efficient operation - a bit like giant lego. A lorry rolls in, a bit of classroom is craned off and slotted in, the lorry rumbles away and the next lorry rolls in.

Recently I was given my official hard-hard hat and flourescent vest and got to see inside the classrooms. I think the teachers will be very pleased. Here are the picures of the early part of the installation. Apologies for the layout. It's my first attempt at uploading photos onto the blog.

This was pretty early on during digging the foundations. Progress seemed pretty slow at first.

Just before the Spring Break the area looked like this.

The rest of the pictures were all taken in one day so you can see how quickly everything sprung up.

This was taken at about 9am.

And this is how it's done....

....in comes a piece of classroom.

Left a bit, right a bit.....

...down a bit, and that's that. They all fitted the foundations absolutely perfectly. Each classroom is made up of 3 or 4 of these units.

We're not sure what was happening here. We were hoping for bungee action, but were sadly disappointed.

This was progress at around midday. By the end of the day the whole classroom block was in place.

And this is one of Sophie's arty shots.

The blocks have now been handed over to the builders for final fitting. Staff get to visit them tomorrow.

The admin and toilet blocks are due in the next couple of days, so it seems everything's on target for the big move over half term. I see or speak with the builders most days. They seem to be dealing with problem after problem (insufficient electrical supplies, no potable water, problems with access that were unforseen etc. etc.) that would have me tearing my hair out, but they assure me all big projects are like this, and they still seem amazingly cheery.

It's All Systems Go

2008-04-27T04:12:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I'm now going to be able to start posting about what's happening on site, rather than griping about slow progress.

We're in a very strange situation at the moment. Our Governing Body still haven't agreed to enter BSF and financial close isn't likely until late May/early June, and yet, as anyone who's been past the school lately will have spotted, there's rapid development of the site.

Portable classrooms literally sprung up overnight. Before the Spring holidays we were extremely anxious that not much was happening. After the Spring holidays we have a classroom village on our playground. Wilmott Dixon, our builders, are well and truly on site. I'm feeling very reassured about how that's going to work. We have two really good Project Managers assigned to our school. They do what they say they're going to do, make sensible decisions and it's all starting to feel like a proper partnership.

We're now facing "the big move" full on. Over the Whitsun half-term about 50% of the school will be moving into temporary accommodation and we're having to plan it like a military operation. The next four weeks are going to be extremely busy and there are a number of loose ends not as yet tied up. We need to sort out any furniture we need early plus our ICT decant requirements. A lot of the delay is due to the odd situation we're in, whereby there's still no commitment from the school and yet we will need some furniture and ICT kit from the BSF budget that we can't theoretically touch yet. How this is going to be managed is still being picked through, but I really hope there's a sense of urgency. Of course, there's also always the chance that Governors won't agree and we all have to move back into our original spaces and the builders pick up their temporary classrooms and take them home again.

From my point of view most of the really contentious issues are now dealt with, although we are still waiting for revised legal agreements and I'm just about to start going through the proposed final plans in great detail, so there's still plenty of potential for problems. On Friday I met with one of our Design Advisers who explained what the process would be for dealing with queries, and that there's a grading in place for matters that can be resolved after financial close, and matters that have to be resolved urgently.

We've been taking pictures of the portable buildings going on to site, so the next post will actually be visual rather than the usual reams of text. We're planning to put a lot more pictures on the blog from now on, so that you can really see the progress.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 25/4/08 Eighty

0-60 in the blink of an eye

2008-03-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

Well my prediction that last week would be busy was correct. Last Friday at the D&B meeting someone as an aside asked whether we were ready for work to start on site this week. Mistaking this for a slightly sarcastic comment on the lack of progress I giggled weakly. Later on in the meeting I realised it was no joke. The builders really did want to start on site this week.

As it happens Wilmott Dixon's JCB's all appear to be tied up on a project down the road this week, but next Tuesday it seems there will finally be some action. This was completely unexpected because the Governing Body still haven't agreed to enter the programme. There has been some sort of agreement on who will underwrite the costs of ground works should the project not go ahead, and I know it won't be the school, so it's all systems go at our end. Basically if work doesn't start next week it puts the whole programme in jeopardy, which would cost rather more than digging and then filling back in a few trenches in the playground, and cancelling a substantial order with Portakabin.

Of course, this means it all feels very real now. This evening I went over the decant proposals with the Leadership Team. Everyone knew it was going to be tough but there were a few shocked faces. It looks as if everything works, though. The curriculum is pretty much protected, but I think it's fair to say that the non-teaching spaces will be very cosy. I'm going to e-mail the plans around to the middle management team tomorrow, and then hide under my desk for a while. I've also got the thorny issue of how to deal with reductions in staff parking to deal with. We're really fortunate in that currently anyone who wants to drive to school can park on site. This will soon end, and there are a lot of staff with a lot of compelling reasons why they should be allocated a parking spot. I am going to be so unpopular!

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 19/03/08 Sixty-five

Tense Times.

2008-03-09T03:38:00.000-07:00

I think we really are heading towards the beginning of the end. Financial close, which was originally supposed to be December 19th, now appears to be mid-April (which is actually after the temporary accommodation is due to rumble on site). I can't see that it can drift past that time without causing major problems. At our end the pace is suddenly really picking up, and we've had a very odd couple of weeks indeed due to desperation on everyone's part to get things resolved.

If you've been following this blog you'll know there are a few major issues where we have not yet had agreement. This week the Governing Body was called to a meeting with the Chief Executive, the Councillor leading on BSF and the Head of Children's Services in order to try and tie up a few loose ends with our school. The meeting had a very reasonable tone, but I'm not sure how much further forward we were at the end of it, as a couple of issues were raised that we hadn't realised involved the school. We're meeting again next week, and we'll see where that takes us.

We also had a session with the architects where we were presented with a list of items that were contributing to the "affordabilility gap" and were asked whether we could do without them. Lingo Bingo fans will want to know that this is known as "value engineering". We didn't agree to all the proposals, but I would imagine that we engineered a lot of value.

Earlier on the same day we had a rare event - a meeting that was originally scheduled for 4 hours, got reduced to 2 and ended up only taking an hour-and-a-half (half an hour of which spent chatting while a group went and stared at the server room). This was an ICT meeting about the decant. Reasonable proposals were put on the table, we all agreed to them and that was pretty much that.

The major concern for me at the moment is that we're supposed to be approaching agreement on everything by Friday. As things stand that seems like a tall order, although far less impossible than some of the other deadlines we've had in the past. I think it's going to be a really busy week though.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 7/03/08 Sixty.

Consultation, consultation, consultation...

2008-03-01T06:26:00.000-08:00

In my last post about things I had learnt I didn't mention consultation. I thought this probably warranted a post on it's own.

If I look back on the consultation we have undertaken, I would mark us as "could do better - but quite good under the circumstances".

The Initial Phases

This started almost three years ago before I joined the school. Staff, Governors and students were all involved in creating and commenting on the vision document. This is really important but I found the whole "Vision" phase (which I also undertook in my previous school) a bit woolly. It includes sweeping statements, such as "We want an ICT rich school" or "We want an inclusive school", rather than "We want an additional 2 classrooms to accommodate the diploma" or "We want to have disabled access to every classroom in the school". In our case this woolliness is returning to haunt us as heated debates on the meaning of inclusion rage around us.

We then had items in the school newsletter, held a special parents meeting, had all KS3 students indertake a BSF project, presented regularly to staff and kept BSF on Governing Body, Middle Management and Leadership Team agendas. A refererence scheme, which demonstrated that our requirements could be met given site and budget constraints was drawn up ... and then we hit the competition phase.

The Competition Phase

This is where it all goes quiet on the consultation front. Anyone involved with or informed about the project has to sign a confidentiality agreement, which completely limits the number of people you can involve. To me, this is one of the major flaws of the BSF process, because this phase is crucial in deciding what will eventually happen within the school, but you can't involve many people in case they accidentally let information slip to a rival bidder. Believe me, this is easy. Even now I still occasionally think our final bidders offered something that was actually offered by the other bidders. The problem is, when you then move into the final bid phase, there are quite a lot of major areas that have already been fixed. Luckily we haven't had too much trouble with larger elements of the proposals, but there is certainly potential for this to happen.

The Final Bid Phase

This is where the proposals are launched to the wider community. We've been very busy during this phase.

Governors: The Governing Body have been informed fully at every stage of the programme, in fat it's engulfed many a meeting over the past few months. The Chair and the Chair of Finance have been in constant touch with the project, but have become more deeply involved at this stage. Governors drew up a list of requirements that had to be met before they agree finally to enter BSF (which they still haven't yet).

Parents & The Community: We had an initial parental/community consultation, and a follow-up meeting where changes made as a result of the first consultation were demonstrated. We also had a smaller, more in-depth, meeting with those parents who had expressed concerns. There is an item on the school website, and this blog was launched as a means of communicating progress to parents and the wider community. We have a regular update in the school newsletter. You have to bear in mind that parents are, quite rightly, mainly concerned with the effect the project will have on their child. This means that those whose children will have left before building works are over may be unhappy.

Staff: The plans went on display in the school reception area. We have had initial 1:1 consultation meetings with each department and should be having our second meeting soon. This is one of the areas I have found the trickiest as you are having to deal with the fact that staff may have wanted more from the project. You are also walking a bit of a tightrope in terms of balancing the needs & desires of different curriculum areas against each other and the project constraints. We discuss the project regularly as a leadership and middle management team.

Students: This is the area I enjoy the most. The Guardian had a BSF supplement this week, and there was an item on student consultation and the work of the Sorrell Foundation. We managed to wangle a session with the Sorrell Foundation. They're really busy and they're mainly concentrating on schools in the later BSF waves, but I think it was good to come in later. Why? Because the BSF process is so slow. As a result of starting in July we have a student design group that will probably see us through to construction and beyond. If we'd started the group over two years ago, many of them would have left and we certainly would have lost momentum. It's a shame they couldn't be more involved in the actual designs (I wonder whether the Guardian examples were working on PFI where there was maybe just one bidder), but they've been very involved in the landscaping proposals, and we're about to start work on the recycling strategy and the dining spaces. They also communicate to the wider student body about the work they do.

So, in summary, consultation is a good thing, but you need to manage expectations, balance agendas and be very aware that there are important phases where it just can't happen properly, and stakeholders will feel out of the loop. I'd love to know whether this problem has now been ironed out for schools in later waves.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 29/02/08 Fifty-Six - it's still really slow.

BSF - Things I have learnt

2008-02-14T09:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a bad BSF day. I'll resist the temptation to post about it until I know I can avoid e-hissy-fitting. The highlight was one of the team-members delightfully describing a particularly messy cabling job as a "snakes wedding". So, instead of entertaining readers with the details of yesterdays meetings, I thought I'd pull together a list of tips for the BSF uninitiated. I began pulling it together during one of the meetings yesterday. Some of the suggestions are things that may have prevented us being where we are now. See if you can spot which.

Be clear what you want: From the outset. It sounds obvious, but you really need to be clear. What do you consider good disabled access, for example. I don't think "Visions" are terribly helpful here. They're too woolly.

Manage Expectations: The problem with "Visions" is that stakeholders will come up with brilliant ideas that they won't get and they will then be disappointed. We never really expected a school farm (yes, a member of staff asked for that), but teachers had hoped for a classroom each.

Pay Attention to the Outline Business Case: If it's not in there you'll have a fight on your hands. Don't just assume that it will be in there because you've asked for it to go in. You will constantly be referred to the OBC, in particular it's reference scheme, the area schedule and room data sheets. If I was a bidder, that's exactly what I'd do too. We all need fixed goalposts.

In fact, just pay attention!: It's easy to drift off and miss something important (maybe while writing a list of tips, for example).

Expect the Unexpected: Even with the best of preparation stuff will appear. Examples for us include £1.5m of sprinklers due to a change in law (I think we won't have to do that), planning insisting on doubling the number of bike spaces to 249, and some wretched problems with levels.

Push for the Room Data Sheets & Legal Agreements at an Early Stage: They form the basis of the contract. If you get things that may be tricky too late in the day there are likely to be problems with timing.

Get Independent Legal Advice Early.

Be Clear What's Agreed: We have had a few instances where we have all thought we've agreed, but on different things. Things will be tricky enough without this.

Try & Make Sure there's one Person who Attends all Meetings: At SNS that person is me. I know it means I was bad in a previous life, but I really think it's invaluable.

Trips aren't that Enlightening: But you can get good lunches.

Choose Your Battles.

You will need more D&B Meetings than you think and fewer of all the other types: At least that's my experience. It would be interesting to hear if people involved in other projects think that too. I suspect the balance will shift radically once services start.

Keep in Touch with other Schools in your Phase: Occasional joint meetings are really helpful.

Be Clear About Who's Doing What with Decant: For example, if your ICT decant is dependent on you buying interim services, what happens if you don't?

Everyone has a Different Agenda: School interests are not the same as anyone elses who's involved in the project.

Everyone Wants the Same Thing: This doesn't really contradict the above. Ultimately everyone really wants the project to work and to happen on time. It should be in everyone's interests.

Maintain Good Relations: I genuinely like most of the people involved in BSF in Hackney. Occasionally we have to have a bit of a skirmish, but it's important to stay professional, keep communication channels open and re-build bridges. There's a lot of pressure on all of us.

Sorry if a lot of that is obvious, but if I'd known then what I know now...

Greetings Edugeek!

2008-02-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Well I wondered why I'd had a few comments from visitors who were obviously concerned about the ICT side of BSF, and now I know. Welcome to anyone popping by who's followed the link from Edugeek.

I've been an occasional Edugeek lurker for a couple of years now. Our Network Manager and I met Tony (Grumbledook) at BETT 2006, having spent the day complaining bitterly about the ICT aspect of BSF to anyone who'd listen. At the time it was clear many people didn't know what on earth we were talking about. If they'd heard of BSF they didn't know what it meant for ICT. What a difference two years makes. Anyway, since then I've been checking the Edugeek BSF forums pretty frequently. It was partly because I realised how valuable it was to be able to communicate with others involved in various stages of the same process, even if you don't agree with them, that I started this blog. As you can probably tell, I'm working on all aspects of BSF at our school, but I've never managed to find any kind of "BSF Champion" (for that is indeed what they call me) community. A few months on, and I still haven't. If anyone knows where I can find one, please let me know.

With regard to the ICT aspect of BSF, a trawl through this blog will probably give you an overview of my feelings. To summarise, it's been the most painful aspect of the whole process for us as a school. We're pretty proud of our ICT provision, and the prospect of having our Network Manager (and potentially other team members) surgically removed is one of the worst aspects of a pretty awful process. For us in Hackney, and I believe this to be the case in all other BSF areas, the ICT is a non-negotiable part of BSF. The big question has therefore always been "Is the pain worth the gain?" We're getting £18m of sorely needed capital investment, but sometimes we've been very close to pulling out, and we still haven't made any final commitment. That said, working with RM has been far more positive than I had expected it to be, and we now know pretty much where we are with the ICT offer, even if we would have preferred not to be there.

Anyway, thanks for dropping in. Hope you'll come again soon. I'm more than happy to answer any questions if anyone's interested in getting a "BSF Champion" perspective on things.

Feeling Guilty

2008-01-31T00:09:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling guilty because I haven't posted for almost two weeks, and I had aimed to post at least once a week. In the early blog honeymoon period I was posting at least twice a week. I'm keen not to let this drift too far, because I know that there are regular readers who use the blog to keep up to date with how things are at Stoke Newington. Oddly (or maybe not) I'm also pretty sure that the blog is not particularly read by parents of students at the school. The blog was originally established as a means of communicating developments frequently with parents, and it was well publicised. Even a recent reminder in Spotlight (our school newsletter) hasn't increased traffic to the blog in any significant way. I'm not sure I'd regularly read a school blog about BSF, though.

Anyway, one of the other reasons I haven't blogged for a while is that we seem to have hit a slow patch. When I look at my post from early January, nothing much has changed. The outstanding issues remain outstanding, although I'd like to think there is all sorts of furious work going on in the background. On top of that we are trying to unravel the fact that it seems the school will be responsible for moving ICT into the temporary accommodation, which is far more expensive, time consuming and complicated than it sounds. There is also an ongoing issue of market-testing for best value.

I think everyone's getting pretty fed up now, and it's fair to say we had a pretty grumpy D&B meeting last week. We had thought that Governors would meet mid-February to take a final decision, but that's almost certainly going to slip. Until Governors make that final decision there's a lot of uncertainty, particularly for staff who may transfer to the LEP. We had hoped that we would move to BSF services from April, which fits neatly around the financial year, but I can't see any way of that happening now. This makes budget planning for next year difficult, and there are lots of other things, such as the move, that we can't put in motion until we know we're joining the programme. My particular dread is that the construction programme will slip. We really have to make the move into temporary accommodation over the Whitsun break, or something already complicated and difficult will become a logistical nightmare.

On the positive side, I have managed to do a fair amount of non-BSF work for a few days. Go on, ask me anything about HR policies!

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 31/01/08 Forty-four - it's all slowed down a bit recently

Fun at BETT

2008-01-14T23:46:00.000-08:00

Last week I went to the BETT exhibition for a day, accompanied by Nick, our Network Manager. Between us we spent a fair amount of time being excited by things, a bit of time sneering and a bit of time grumbling at someone from PfS who wasn't hugely receptive (all we want is for it to be less painful for other schools).

You've probably realised through my posts that BSF has caused me innumerable mood swings that aren't attributable in any way to my time of life. I veer from excitement to despair to blind panic to boredom, passing most moods in between. BETT mostly made me feel pretty excited again. Our idea is that during the decant phase we put something new and a bit experimental into each temporary room, the idea being that:

a) It's something to sweeten the pill of moving.
b) We won't put stuff that doesn't work/people don't like into the finished classrooms.

We found a good few exciting bits and bobs, some of which are even RM products. We found:

£200 very basic teeny-weeny laptops that are just the job.
An overhead projector that interactively projects onto a table, which would have been ideal for viewing and scribbling on plans of the building.
Visualisers.
Some very cool furniture.
Some very cool wall tracking stuff.
And some bouncy ergonomic chairs.

We also got oranges with the BBC logo branded onto them, but I don't expect we'll get them under BSF. Anyway, as you can probably tell it all made me feel that there might be some fun to be had. I think we've got enough bits and pieces in mind now to put something new into most rooms. Let's hope MPB and RM are up for it, and we've got freedom to drop in a few bits and pieces of our choice without being contractually constrained.

As an aside Nick saw something that actually made him grin very broadly and literally jump for joy. I'm not a teccy, but basically it was like a giant i-phone whiteboard but PC based. He says no-one can have one in the school until the existing whiteboards collapse with exhaustion, though, and that's probably going to be quite some time yet, but it's something to look forward to.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 17/01/08 Forty-one - they've started back in earnest

Normal Service Resumes

2008-01-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

Well it's a new year, we're all back at work and it's time to return from the blog-break.

We're now about to freeze the designs so they can be fully costed and presented to Governors for sign-off. First thing this morning I therefore removed the display panels in the foyer showing the BSF proposals and it struck me how much has been amended during the consultation process. A few weeks ago the architects happened to mention there had been 87 alterations to the plans since the final bid submission. We must now be over the 100 mark. Some of these changes are minor (e.g. removing a small partition), some are quite major (e.g. the ever changing superloos). The vast majority are due to consultation at various levels. The landscaping and elevations have also changed considerably, and thank goodness for that!

Not everyone had a break over christmas. The BSF project director was apparently e-mailing on Christmas Day. We received an e-mail from him on the 28th telling us that additional funding has been found to allow us the proposed core-ten elevations, which was really good news. You've probably gathered that things have really moved on, and I think we're reaching a point where we could recommend acceptance of proposals to the Governing Body. There are a few fairly major outstanding issues, though:

Room Data Sheets: We've been strongly advised by a number of people who know about such things that we should not agree final sign-up until we have been through every single room in detail to establish that we're getting what we need and resolve any difficulties. We currently have a bit of an issue about availability of staff drink making facilities, and I'm sure this won't be the only matter that needs to be thrashed out a bit. I must admit the idea of going through each room in this level of data fills me (and presumably anyone else involved, some of whom may have to sit through the process with 3 schools) with dread, but I can absolutely see it's something that has to be done.
Legal Agreement: There was a lot of work outstanding here, but I gather there has again been a lot of progress over the past 2/3 weeks. Basically the Governing Body Agreement refers to lots of other legal documents that weren't finalised. We have been advised not to sign until we have a full understanding of the contents of these documents which are, of course, enormous and a bit impenetrable. Luckily the Learning Trust has funded some extremely helpful solicitors to do most of the reading and interpretation for us.
Accessibility: Disabled Access was highlighted as a major priority at an early stage. It's the stated aim of the Governing Body never to have to turn a child away from the school again. We are waiting to meet with an independent consultant who we would like to look at the plans and make recommendations if necessary. Of course, if they make lots of recommendations this could delay design freeze. The architects are pretty confident about the proposals which are certainly an enormous improvement on the current situation, but we would feel more comfortable hearing what a specialist has to say.
Decant and Phasing: There remains a fair bit of work to do here.

Of course there are a few other minor bits and pieces, but I think that's a fair summary of the situation.

And as for my break... I carried loads of BSF work home to do over the break, and carried it all back again completely untouched! I did, however, read the "Honeywood File" as recommended via a comment on this blog. It's a fictional account of a building project reported through the letters filed by the architect. It's about 80 years old, but could have been written today. Some parts are laugh out loud funny. It's out of print and was a bit tricky to get hold of, but my copy's about to go out on lending rotation, so if anyone wants to borrow it let me know.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 21/12/07 Thirty-four (there was only one in the last week of term). First BSF meeting of 2008 is due to be held tomorrow.

Brussel Sprouts Forever

2007-12-24T02:34:00.000-08:00

A few people, my long-suffering husband included, have hinted that I use the Festive Break to completely get away from BSF. I couldn't resist bringing the decant and phasing plans home in case I need something to fill an idle moment. I've also purchased a book called "The Honeywood File" as suggested by a comment contributing parent on this page, which I plan to read. I think I'll conceal it in a copy of Heat, so no-one knows what I'm really doing. I suspect hauling the family off to look at fine examples of core-ten will be a step too far, though, although if we do happen to go to Marylebone High Street, I don't see any harm in us accidentally wandering past the school at the top of the road that uses it. I'll withhold the post I was going to write on the PfS commissioned independent report on BSF until the New Year, and hope I don't accidentally do it when filled with a bit too much festive cheer.

One of my colleagues suggested in my Christmas Card that, for the next few days only, BSF should stand for Brussel Sprouts Forever. Alternatives I've thought of include:

Being Santa's Friend
Big Snow Flurries
Bloomin' Seasonal Festivities
Being Seen by Family
Blasted Stocking Fillers

I'm sure I could come up with a few more, but I think that's quite sad enough already. I'm off to peel potatoes.

BSF - Designed by Vogons

2007-12-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

I've been threatening for quite a while to write a post on the nightmare that is the BSF process. Well, it's Sunday evening and I'm in the mood. It's going to be a bit long and ranty.

I think the short way of expressing the problems is to say that I've been at my current school for over two years. The BSF process had started a few months before I joined and we still haven't quite agreed to a set of plans for the school or, for that matter, that we're committed to joining the process. If we'd just been given £21million and told to improve the school with it:

a) We'd probably be almost finished.
b) We would have actually had £21million spent on the school (instead of the £18million we end up with).

Instead we've had loads of visions, lots of consultation (though probably not of the right sort) and heaps of meetings. See my post dated 3 December for an idea of the quantity of meetings. It is the most crazy waste of public money that I've ever come across, and very few people involved in the process disagree. The preferred bidders we're working with have always seemed to be very open about the costs, and have told us that all the bid costs will be recouped from the Hackney BSF "pot". I know approximately what the costs are, but wonder whether putting the figure in the public domain would break commercial confidentiality, so I won't. Suffice to say the figure is big! That's just the bidder costs. In my more impish moments I consider putting in a Freedom of Information request about the costs to the Council Tax payers of Hackney.

Here is a list of things I don't like about the process:

It's enormously time consuming, particularly in terms of meetings.
It's enormously bureaucratic and expensive.
It patronises schools by suggesting they couldn't do these things alone.
If you go into BSF having your ICT services taken over by the private sector is compulsory. In theory handing over Facilities Management is optional, but in practice it's very difficult to retain them.
There is more than one layer of profit involved in all of these services, hence value for money is questionable at best.
Although the process is supposed to be "transformational", it's not clear what this term is supposed to mean.
Some parts of the process are just ridiculous. The Design Quality Indicators spring to mind as a low point (I may write something on this another time).
It's constrained by something called Building Bulletin 1998 (BB98). This is a formula that tells us how much space we should have. It doesn't allow for the types of extended services we would love to have on site - bases for Housing & Social Services, a creche etc.
It goes against the increase in school autonomy that LMS brought.
There is potential for budgetary problems in around seven years time when the ICT contract ends.
We all know about the horrors that privatisation of services can bring.
The bids were a million words each. The contracts are probably similar in size. Many trees have died for this process.
It engulfs my working life to the extent where it's occasionally hard to keep on top of other aspects of my job. Sometimes I dream about BSF.

And in the interest of balance, here's what I like about the BSF:

There will be much needed improvements to the premises. No leaky roofs etc.
Many of the architectural problems with the building will be ironed out.
It's been a tremendous learning curve. I know loads more about architecture than I did two years ago.
I'm looking forward to having a Help Desk for Facilities Management and ICT. I think there will be improvement in services.
I really like the proposals for the new block. I think it will look great.
I've met loads of really good people over the past couple of years. Some are real characters, some have taught me a lot and one of them took us on a lovely narrow boat trip on the canals of London (don't worry - no Labour Party-esque dodginess involved).
And, most importantly I believe it's aims are good. Ultimately it should provide a better learning environment for our students and allow us to focus on delivering the best education possible rather than dealing with dodgy plumbing. In short it's a good idea, extremely poorly executed.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 14/12/07 Thirty-three (plus a Governing Body Meeting that I'm not counting)

Something from the Chair

2007-12-11T07:04:00.000-08:00

It's time for a new voice. Here's something Henry, our Chair of Governors, copied me into recently.

"My last email set me wondering on how the headship recruitment would have gone if it was run like BSF.

Well, we would have a rigid process imposed on us, had to hold around 50 meetings on it, would have had the job description changed without informing us - just before it was sent out, The vote on who to choose would have happened while we were out of the room for a break and key
elements of our requirements would not have been communicated at all

And of course we couldn't have advertised for just a headteacher. To ensure economies of scale we would have had to advertise for a package including a headteacher, ICT support staff, cleaners and caretakers - and we would simply have had to accept the headteacher that came with the rest of the package. and have had to sign a 10 year contract before we could replace them.

what fun that would have been...."

I think that gives a good flavour of our frustrations with the process.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 11/12/07 Thirty (and one of those lasted five hours)

Are we nearly there yet?

2007-12-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

Next week Governors meet and the aim was that they would be making the final decision about whether or not to enter BSF. As I've inferred before, I would be amazed if Governors feel they can make this decision

I've just had a conversation with our friendly local Education Advisor, who asked me where we are with the list of Governors' issues, so I thought it might be helpful to update the post from 6 November. In true Top of the Pops style, the positions last month are shown in brackets with coloured writing.

RESOLVED -
SEN spaces
not losing a gym
TV studio near media/english classrooms
configuration of staffroom/reprographics room
use of "L" block/boilerhouse, school to be involved in recruiting new staff
number/size of classrooms (pending staff consultation)
circulation (pending staff consultation)
Central ICT hosting (↑ we still don't like it, but it's much cheaper)
Specialist ICT equipment (↑ don't know what we'll get, but we know how to get it)
ICT "interim services" offer (↑)
Demonstration the BSF ICT Strand will offer a clear improvement on current provision (↑ Nick feels the current offer will result in improvement, although we are resigned to subsidising capital outlay)
Clarity on how accidental damage and vandalism will be dealt with (↑)
Clarity on the Facilities Management Variant Bid (↑ Getting clarity was like pulling teeth, because no-one really wanted us to take it, but we got it in the end. We then decided actually, everyone was right, we didn't really want it, but that wasn't the point.)
FM Interim Services Offer (↑)

LOOKING MUCH BETTER -
Stakeholder involvement (but needs to continue)
Clarity on ICT funding levels at end of initial contract period
Office/workroom spaces
Covering of courtyard (↑ we know we're not going to have it covered. That might not have been what we wanted, but at least we know the score)
Changing rooms (↑ Location resolved - size/layout still to be worked on)
Build timescale (↑ This is clearer, though sadly not what we announced at Thursday's parent meeting. We have yet to see a fully worked up Decant and Phasing proposal, though)
Building fully accessibly (↑ it still isn't and may never be, but we've now agreed an approach)
Energy saving/environmental impact (↑ I have now glanced at what's known as a BREEAM assessment, and it comes in as "Very good", but have not yet seen or discussed the full detail)
Level of ICT Technical Support (↑ This has improved to the extent where we can recommend it, but we're cynical that it will work long term)
Access to ICT network for Media Web & Music Technicians (↑ I don't feel this has been fully discussed, but we feel there won't be any obstructions)
Inspirational challenging design for the school reflective of school specialism (↑ we have a design we really like, but it may not be affordable)

WORK STILL NEEDED OR MATTERS STILL UNRESOLVED

Value for money/market testing (there are two teams of Quantity Surveyors working frantically on this, though and we have on occasion been reminded that it's not the school's money! All involved acknowledge that this process will never offer value for money)
Quality of materials (still not yet discussed)
Liaison between Design and Build & Facilities Management (I've been told it's happened, but have not seen any evidence of it)
Discussion needed on how Local Education Partnership (LEP) processes will work once BSF is in operation (will anyone ever talk to us about this).

So, as you can see there has been lots of upward movement, but some fairly major issues still not fully resolved. Although our Governing Body are very much their own people, I would imagine that they would be prepared to be flexible if there were a couple of minor matters outstanding, but that there will be too much that is still "unknown" to allow them to agree formally to enter BSF on Wednesday. In fact, matters listed above aside, we're not in a position to sign of the Legal Agreement, as there is still a great deal of documentation still missing.

When I started this Blog I suggested that it might be short lived if Governors didn't sign up at the end of November. It now appears I will be continuing at least until the New Year. I wonder where the meeting count will be by then? I can hardly bear the tension.

Notes on Meetings

2007-12-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

As this blog is now a month old I thought it would be interesting to look more closely at the meeting count to date.

Why the count?

BSF is enormously bureaucratic. At one stage earlier this year we did a rough meeting count and it was well into the hundreds over a period of two years. I thought a meeting count would be a simple way of illustrating how intensive the process is. Admittedly things are particularly busy at the moment, but I think high levels of meetings will continue for at least another year. It would be impossible to keep track of the amount of time consumed by BSF outside of meetings, but it's a lot. Probably at least the amount of time spent in meetings.

What counts as a meeting?

For the purposes of this blog it's any scheduled meeting where the main focus is some aspect of BSF. I haven't counted meetings where it was one agenda item amongst many, and I haven't counted inpromptu discussions, of which there are many. I've only counted meetings involving me, which are most of the meetings related to Stoke Newington School, although there have been a couple of ICT meetings that have just been attended by the Network Manager. I haven't counted meetings that have been cancelled, because that would be cheating. I also didn't count a BSF social event or the session with prospective Headteachers.

What types of meeting are there?

Lots! And to illustrate this, here are some statistics since the start of this blog. Sorry if this is a bit sad. I promise, I do have a life.

Total number of hours spent in meetings: 51
Longest meeting: 4 hours
Shortest meeting: 1 hour
Number of working days since 2/11: 22
Total number of BSF meeting free working days: 4
Most meetings in one day: 4 on 27th November
Number of meetings off site: 7

Meeting Topics: Design & Build 10
Facilities Management 2
ICT 4
Staffing 2
Legal 2
General/consultation 5

And in Conclusion....

.... BSF involves a whole heap of meetings! Of course we knew that anyway. Meetings involving me are a small percentage of total meetings for Hackney BSF, and this really isn't intended to be a "poor me" aspect of the blog. All three Phase 1 schools will be having the same numbers of meetings, and there are masses that go on in the background involving a cast of thousands. I'm afraid this is a process that lends itself to enormous numbers of meetings. Now the cost of these meetings? Well, that's a subject for another post (but one four hour meeting was attended by 19 people).

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 3/12/07 - Twenty-Five

Quick Progress Report

2007-11-29T00:24:00.000-08:00

I'm off for the next few days, but just wanted to do a quick update.

There will be a further BSF parent consultation event next Thursday (6th December) at 6pm at the school. There will be a brief run through the plans for anyone who wasn't at the previous meeting, but the main focus will be responding to the comments arising from the Parent/Community meeting held on 30 October.

The Governors' Resourcing and Community Committee met on Tuesday. This meeting had originally been scheduled to allow the committee to discuss all the BSF proposals in depth so they could make recommendations to full Governing Body meeting the following day. As there are a few pretty major areas of the design and build still unresolved the committee only looked at the Facilities Management and ICT aspects of the bid in depth. The feeling was that these were much better and we are heading towards something we can accept. Will we have reached something we can accept on Design and Build by December 12th? Personally I'd be amazed, but we have seen BSF rabbits plucked from hats before now, so let's see.

There's lots going on next week, so watch that meeting count rise.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 29/11/07 - Twenty-Four

Jumping on Lilos

2007-11-25T09:12:00.000-08:00

I've likened BSF to jumping on a lilo. You iron out one area and another pops up. We had a really positive (small) Design and Build meeting on Friday, but I'm now worried about the Facilities Management (FM) strand. This strand had been pretty steady for ages, but I was sent the report for Governors through the other day and discovered a few areas where there were either major omissions or where the contents were concerning. The scheduled FM meeting on Friday was cancelled, so my concerns were dispatched via e-mail. Here's a list of things that still need sorting. Hold on tight - it's pretty scary:

Landscaping
Decant and Phasing
TUPE
Legal agreements
Elevations
Room Data Sheets
The "Semi-Frozen Scheme" versus the "Governors Scheme"
FM - the Variant Bid
FM - phasing of interim service
Student consultation

Sorted:

The ICT bid (as far as possible - although Governors have yet to agreed the offer)

There are other areas that aren't yet resolved, such as parental consultation, but where we at least know where we're heading.

We're supposed to have all the above resolved in time for the Governors' Meeting on December 12th. Will we manage it? I can hardly bear the tension! It seems there's loads of lilo jumping to do.

On a completely separate note I was doing my regular bout of volunteering at a local community bookshop on Saturday, and was introduced to a customer who just happens to be a Learning Trust lawyer dealing with BSF. We spent an entertaining couple of minutes chatting about it, but there is no escape. BSF is everywhere.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 23/11/07 - Seventeen

Wrangling over Walls

2007-11-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

Today was another busy BSF Day. This morning the Chair (Henry) and I met with some of the parents who had expressed most concerns about the project. I don't think we could say that all their fears were allayed, but they were happier with the decant plans. Over and over again we keep coming back to value for money and some day soon I will steel myself and write my general BSF process rant. The other big things were changing rooms and lockers. There are a lot of people who really want improvements in the plans for changing rooms. Of all the "extras" I think that's the one that seems the highest priority. There is also a bit of a debate going on about lockers. Again, probably a subject for another post. After the meeting I wandered the school with the person who's arranging the decant and we tried to think a bit laterally about some of the issues.

I then met with the Head and hatched plans (but for the purposes of clarity this was a random discussion and won't be included in my meeting count).

We then had our last set of 1:1 meetings with Heads of Department, which were generally positive. My big fear has always been that there will be classrooms missing, and I don't that's going to happen. Having had these discussions we were able finally to look at work and meeting space. Things are obviously getting a bit tight financially as we ended up wrangling a bit over walls. It was pretty good natured, but it went something like this:

Me: Couldn't we put a wall up here (in nebuland for those who know the plans) and create more office spaces.

Lovely Architect: Well, it's a matter of cost.

Me: But look, we've taken these walls out here. Can't they just be moved over to nebuland instead.

Lovely Architect: I don't think it's affordable.

Me: Well, how about we do this. This saves us a door as well as some walls.

Lovely Architect: (makes general negative noises) etc. etc. You get the drift.

It's the dawning of a new, tougher era.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 22/11/07 - Sixteen

A little something some students made earlier

2007-11-21T07:20:00.000-08:00

Apparently written while practicing on the stairs and with no prompting by staff whatsoever. I look forward to drama lobbying by staging productions in the car park.

A Bad Couple of Days

2007-11-18T08:05:00.000-08:00

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

A quick update

2007-11-15T01:25:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update as I want to keep in the habit of posting every 2/3 days.

The date for Governor sign-up has been moved as we know that there are certain aspects of the plans that won't be "approvable" by November 28th. The proposals may be better, but we won't have had the opportunity to consult fully.

We're therefore aiming for Governors to meet on December 12th, with Parent/Community consultation possibly on the 6th December.

I'm currently awash with paper. Documents are coming in thick and fast. Tonight we're meeting the independent solicitors that have been engaged to act on behalf of the Governing Body, so anything legal generates paper, although their comments are very user friendly. I'm also preparing paperwork to send out to staff who are likely to be transferred (meeting this time next week). Large papers on ICT, FM and Design & Build have also pinged into my inbox. So enough of this blogging, let paper shuffling commence!

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 15/11/07 - Eleven and a celebration.

Consultation

2007-11-11T04:52:00.000-08:00

We've pretty much been consulting on and off for over two years, but it's really key now. One of the problems with the process is that during the competition phase, where we had two bidders, we couldn't consult very much at all because of "commercial confidence" i.e. not being able to risk one bidder finding out what the other was doing. This has meant that, although over a year ago we met with parents, staff, students to ask what they would like, it's only now that we can show the final proposals to them and get their feedback. We are, as usual, working on a very tight timetable and governors are absolutely clear, and quite rightly, that they won't approve entry into BSF until they feel we have had full consultation with stakeholder groups.

So far we have had:

A meeting with student council representatives with a particular focus on landscaping.
A parent & community consultation evening.
A staff drop-in session.
The first of many individual meetings with Heads of Department.
A support staff meeting with a BSF focus.
Plans displayed in the foyer and me pouncing on any students who make the mistake of showing too much interest. My lovely laminated explanatory labels didn't even last a day, so verbal explanations it has to be!

Frankly the list looks long, but we'll have to do more. Staff consultation's going well, with most staff happy (or not too unhappy) with what they're getting. Problems have arisen, but they're resolvable so far. There will, as ever, have to be compromises though.

We need more student consultation. We need to know that what the students suggested was listened to and acted upon, and this hasn't been demonstrated yet. I don't want to do lipservice constulation, particularly with the students. Their ideas were good and reasonable and they're a great group.

We definitely need another parent and community evening, and we've got one pencilled in for November 22nd. I guess during our first consultation evening we had around 30 people attending which, given that we did an invite for each student to take home, followed it up by text and leafleted local homes (which gave me renewed admiration for those who do that for a living), I thought was low. The major cause of controversy here were the levels of disruption that would be caused during building works. I guess for many parents their children will be hit by over two years of disruption, then leave and won't be around to enjoy the benefits. Even taking that into account, though, the parents were shown plans that even the school thinks are too disruptive and unworkable, and we need to go back to them with new plans. You've also got to feel for the residents of Clissold Rd who've had years of the inconvenience caused by construction works on the Leisure Centre. This finally comes to a halt, they get a few months of peace and in rumble the BSF trucks. We absolutely need to do our best to minimise disruption for them, because generally they're very supportive.

Again, writing this makes me realise how much ground needs to be covered in such a short space of time. Will we do it? Watch this space.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 9/11/07 - EIGHT (plus two hours on BSF with the prospective Headteachers, but I won't count that)

ICT Services

2007-11-08T08:27:00.000-08:00

For those of you who aren't familiar with the BSF process let me explain that as part of the scheme the school has to take the ICT services. Facilities Management services are theoretically optional, but ICT services aren't.

This element of the project more than any other has caused great consternation across the school community. We're pretty proud of our ICT. It's not perfect, but we have a great team in place (one of whom, Nick, our Network Manager, is likely to start posting on this Blog pretty soon) and I think things move on in leaps and bounds here. The idea of losing control, staff and, in particular, creative potential is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to eventual participation of the school in the whole BSF project.

I don't think we'll ever be persuaded that the ICT side of BSF is a good thing for us. If it was that great, the Government wouldn't need to make it compulsory because schools would all be champing at the bit to buy in. There will be a large amount of capital investment and there will be savings to schools for a few years, but in our case much of the investment will go on replacing cabling that's been ripped out by the building works. Anyway, rant over. All involved have heard the SNS rant many times now.

Basically Governors will need to decide whether these issues, together with the others that arise from the project, have the potential to make such a major negative impact on the school that they outweight the positives.

Earlier this week there were two meetings to look at movement on the ICT offer. I don't think I can go into too much detail here, because we haven't yet had final confirmation from RM (the potential ICT provider), but it looks as if they are approaching a solution that will reduce costs for central services, and resolve worries that we had about staffing levels here. We also had discussion about what might happen to the ICT team when they're transferred to RM, which again I can't go into too much detail about, but allayed some of my fears. We were given a draft of the document which will go to the governing body, which covers many areas that have been concerning in just enough depth, but seems pretty open and honest. We also flagged up a few areas, such as training and kit, which will need to be gone into in depth after "financial close" on December 19th.

Anyway, just as a teaser, here are some of the topics I'll be covering in the next few posts:

TUPE Transfer
Consultation
Facilities Management
Kitting out Rooms
Lawyers
The Sign-up process
The BSF process (likely to be another rant)

Bet that's whetted your appetites.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 8/11/07 - SEVEN

A Good Couple of Days

2007-11-06T09:17:00.001-08:00

We seem to have made a lot of progress over the past couple of days. Monday morning Henry (the Chair) and I met with Mouchelparkman Babcock (MPB) to go over the list of Governors' Requirements and to check what progress has been made since September. Of course, not everything's resolved, but a lot has moved on. Reprinting the whole list in a blog is probably a bit impractical (the full list can be found on the SNS website), but to summarise, subject to further staff consultation, the feeling is:

RESOLVED -

SEN spaces
not losing a gym
TV studio near media/english classrooms
configuration of staffroom/reprographics room
use of "L" block/boilerhouse, school to be involved in recruiting new staff
number/size of classrooms (pending staff consultation)
circulation (pending staff consultation)

LOOKING MUCH BETTER -

inspirational challenging design for the school reflective of school specialism
circulation, number/size of classrooms
stakeholder involvement (but needs to continue)
Central ICT hosting
specialist ICT equipment
clarity on ICT funding levels at end of initial contract period
ICT "interim services" offer
office/workroom spaces

WORK STILL NEEDED -

Value for money/market testing
location of changing rooms (although there is a potential solution for this)
covering of courtyard
build timescale
quality of materials (not yet discussed)
building fully accessible (although has gone from 5% to 85% accessible and full curriculum can be accessed)
energy saving/environmental impact,
liaison between Design and Build & Facilities Management
level of technical support (again, I hear there are proposals afoot)
access to ICT network for media, music & web technicians
demonstration the BSF ICT strand will offer a clear improvement in current provision
clarity on how accidental damage and vandalism will be dealt with
clarity on the Facilities Management "Variant Bid"
FM "interim services" offer
discussion needed on how Local Education Partnership (LEP) processes will work once BSF is in operation.

Sorry if some of this is in unintelligable "BSF Speak". It's a bit unavoidable in this post. Ask me through the comments box if you need any clarification.

It may look as if the list of unresolved areas is long, but we also came up with a plan to deal with most of these by the 28th November. At least MPB are clear what we're looking for, and I know they're working furiously to present acceptable proposals.

We have also had some really positive movement on ICT and I had a good meeting with support staff yesterday, but I think this post is quite long enough, so more on that in the next couple of days.

And finally, we hope to have a PTA led parent consultation evening on 22nd November. We need to check all concerned can make it, so the date is only provisional, but pencil it in and watch the website.

Meeting Count - 2/11/07 - 6/11/07 - FIVE

Of Elevations, Decant and Phasing

2007-11-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

There are lots of areas of the BSF plans for the school that haven't yet been settled, and some are bigger/more important than others. Yesterday I went to a meeting with the architects and builders together with the Chair of Governors. In particular there were two important areas we focussed on.

The appearance of the building (Elevations).

Anyone at the Community Consultation Evening will have heard the architects say how may revisions there had been to the elevations. Love it or loath it, it's a very strong building and deciding what to put next to it has caused huge difficulties. I must have seen around 15 versions of the plans. These versions have been discarded because either the school didn't like them, the planners didn't like them or they were unaffordable. I'd imagine there are a good few we never saw because the architects themselves discarded them. What was eventually submitted in the final bid was what is termed a "pastiche" of the exisiting building. When the Governing Body saw the proposal they felt it was uninspiring and so it was back to the drawing board again. Just before half term we were presented with a few options and there was unanimous agreement amongst those in the room that the architects should work on elevations using "corten". This is a type of steel that oxidises over the years without flaking, so the building will gradually change in appearance. The idea is that the reception and windows will have colour that contrasts strongly with this, and there will be lots of internal colour as well. Personally I think the plans are now coming along well and looking exciting. Let's hope everyone else agrees.

Decant & Phasing Plans

This is the stickiest area of work at the moment. Of course it's impossible to have an £18 million building project without some disruption to school life, but it's really important that this is kept to a manageable level and that good, creative teaching can continue. In addition every penny that is spent on temporary accommodation is a penny not spent on works to the school, which no-one wants. The current plans for decant of classrooms and phasing of works are not acceptable to the school and quite rightly caused consternation with parents. Yesterday we agreed some guidelines (e.g. making the most of the time when Year 11 and 13 have left the school, not taking out half of the school for an entire year, office staff being able to "camp out") and agreed a timeline for MPB to come up with some solutions that we think can be put back to parents again prior to the Governors' Meeting on November 28.

The next few weeks are going to be really intense for all concerned. One thing all involved are unanimously agreed on is the "clunkiness" of the BSF process, which is certainly the most bureaucratic thing I've ever been involved in in 18 years of local government employment. To illustrate this I'm going to show a "meeting count" starting from now. This will only be a count of the meetings I attend from now on. I go to most meetings relevant to the school, but there are a few regarding ICT that I don't attend. Life's too short to count the ones I've been to so far, so here goes:

BSF Meeting Count as at 2/11/07: ONE

Why a Blog?

2007-10-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

After last night's parent and community consultation evening a few of us were discussing updating the website and other ways of best communicating what's going on with BSF, and we came up with the idea of a blog (amongst other things).

We thought some of the joys of using a blog were:

readers will be able to go back through the archives to follow the story.
it's relatively simple for me to update regularly without having to turn to our friendly Web Designer for help every time it needs changing.
it's available for anyone to look at at any time. Not depending on "pupil post" is always a good thing.
it will allow people to comment and for me to answer queries for all to see.
it should be a more informal and personal way of giving up to date information.

Of course the down side is that I'll have to remember to do it frequently enough to keep people interested, but I promise I'll try.

The idea is that we'll keep the blog running throughout the BSF process. If Governors decide not to proceed with the project at the end of November, then it will be a very short blog. If they do sign up, this blog will run for around three years. My blog will be very much about the bricks, mortar (actually more likely to be Corten - more of which later) and services side of BSF. We plan to set up a partner blog about the creative process, which will be written by Helen Wood, our Specialism Co-ordinator.

I hope to remain as balanced and neutral as possible, because I think that's my job and it's a job I enjoy and want to keep. I will be honest, though, and there will be things that I cannot discuss at times due to confidentiality or other sensitivities, so please bear with me.

Keep an eye on the website for additional updates and parents, keep checking your children's bags for letters and copies of Spotlight.