Eric Wright Professional Services, Eric Wright FM’s dedicated property management and maintenance offering, has helped Lancashire high school, Ashton Community Science College, to reduce administrative hours and optimise budgets with a programme of campus maintenance work and upgrades.
A community high school for students aged 11-16 years old, Ashton Community Science College near Preston declares in its motto that it aims to be ‘a school to be proud of’ and the leadership team was keen to apply these high standards to its estates. However, following a staff restructure involving the loss of a site supervisor, all responsibility for health & safety management and site maintenance was assigned to business director, Su Evans.
Su explains: “My role and my areas of expertise have always been finance, business and HR so I not only had to take on additional responsibilities but had to deliver those tasks with limited experience in property management and maintenance.
“It made sense for us to bring in expertise from Eric Wright Professional Services so that we could maintain high standards across the school campus and free up my time to focus on my core remit.”
The Eric Wright Professional Services team is delivering ongoing consultancy services and has successfully completed a significant security and safeguarding project, involving replacing half of the external doors on the school estate.
Eric Wright Professional Services was responsible for writing the tender, procuring the contractor and project managing the works. The security upgrade has been so successful that the consultancy team has now been tasked with managing a roof repair and upgrade programme, with responsibility for advising the school on the required scope of works, in addition to managing the tendering, procurement and delivery process.
Su continues: “Working with Eric Wright Professional Services not only frees up my time, it also means that we can be confident that repairs, maintenance and property management are being expertly handled in a cost-efficient way that helps us to prioritise tasks while ensuring we use our available estates management budgets wisely.”
Eric Wright Professional Services has provided Ashton Community Science College with a dedicated contact, project surveyor, Tim Norbury, who has spent time getting to know the school campus and culture so that he can add value with advice on pre-emptive maintenance and prioritisation.
Andrew Hird, head of Professional Services at Eric Wright, continues: “Many schools have large estates and the responsibility for managing them often lies with managers who have lots of education or business experience but have no background in property, construction or maintenance.
“At Eric Wright Professional Services, we have an experienced team that works collaboratively with clients to maximise their resources and address their property requirements in line with their priorities. We’re a RICS member company backed by the knowledge and resources of the Eric Wright Group, ensuring that clients like Ashton Community Science can be completely confident of service standards and expertise across everything we do.”
