About Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School
Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School has an internal gross floor area 7,200 m2, external areas of 113,900 m2 with 945 pupils (aged 11 to 16) and school staff team of 95 made up of 70 teachers and 25 support staff. The school has a Good Ofsted rating.
It was built by Jarvis Construction and is operated under PFI. Opened in August 2000, the 25 year contract changed hands when Bellrock Property and Facilities Management bought the contract in 2010. Throughout this period of change there was no impact to the services delivered to the school. The contract itself focuses on availability as the measure of success and against which the penalty clause mechanism is invoked.
It was the first voluntary aided PFI school the stakeholders being Cardinal Heenan School Services Ltd, Governing Body (Cardinal Heenan), Diocese of Leeds, and Leeds City Council.
Bellrock delivers a full range of FM services including planned and reactive maintenance, building fabric maintenance, grounds maintenance, cleaning and waste, as well as the school’s catering service.
Partnership
Despite the recent change of head teacher the school systems manager has been involved with the contract since the start. The same can be said of the on-site facilities manager. This is a successful, close working relationship that has been established at site level that in turn means that the inter-organisational relationship between the Leeds City Council, the diocese and Bellrock is extremely positive. A single point of contact with the governing body has also streamlined communication and improved engagement with that particular stakeholder group.
Some examples of the partnership at work include:
- Supporting the successful applications for the Stephen Lawrence Award and Schools Healthy Eating Award. Members of the Bellrock team met with the assessors and in the case of the healthy eating award Bellrock made changes to menus such as reducing the number of times pizza was available, and only allowing pupils to purchase one biscuit or cake. The catering team also fixed prices on healthy products for three years to incentivise those choices.
- Regularly managing works outside of the contract at no fee. During the summer period the school was undertaking the replacement of a series of benches that had been damaged by pupils. The costs that were quoted were substantial. With a view to working in partnership and ensuring a cost effective solution, Bellrock found a new supplier and installed the benches as part of the daily routine maintenance. This was done at no charge and saved the school in the region of £1,500.
- The school has established a Pupil School Council that represents the student community. Regular meetings ensure that all aspects of the school can be discussed along with ideas for enriching the school environment. These discussions include facilities. During the most recent meeting Bellrock agreed to support the creation of allotment space by identifying a suitable location and clearing the ground. The team has also agreed to make the school available free of charge for a fund raising event for the allotment.
- Bellrock consistently enables free access to the school during out of hours periods for OFSTED inspections and other activities. During the summer holidays for example, due to the restricted opening hours within the contract and as the Bellrock team undertakes remedial works, the school’s IT team is allowed free access at the same time to reduce costs.
- The school is required to demonstrate health and safety compliance to Leeds City Council. Bellrock has created templates for the school business management team to use and has supported the process by reporting its own facilities compliance in the required format.
Sustainability
Environmental awareness amongst the students, coupled with the opportunity to decrease costs by recycling and reducing energy usage, have driven the sustainability agenda at the school. Listed below are just some of the initiatives that have been delivered between the school and Bellrock:
- The number of dry mixed recycling bins sited at the school has doubled. This has helped reduced the general waste to landfill by 50% thereby reducing the landfill tax due. See-through bags are used in the bins so that the cleaners can quickly identify if items are in the incorrect bin and then sort them by hand. Food waste is now also collected separately from the kitchen contributing to the overall general waste sent to landfill.
- The school insists that students bring their own water bottles. Bellrock has supported this initiative by removing plastics cups at water stations. This has saved approximately £2,500 per year.
- Lighting is being replaced with LED lamps as part of the life cycle management. This has already led to significant energy savings of around £5k per year.
Innovation
The nature of the relationship between the school and Bellrock is to strive to create the best environment for student learning. This includes cost saving initiatives where funds can be directed to learning activities or improvements to the environment itself. Several projects where the school and Bellrock have introduced a new approach have resulted in this outcome:
- The introduction of movement sensors as part of the project to replace the light fittings to LED also proved very cost effective. These have been fitted in the main and departmental corridors and toilet facilities. The energy consumption reduction is estimated to be 50%.
- Several innovations have been introduced to manage cleaning and repair to regularly damaged and dirty areas. These have been researched and costed by the Bellrock team in conjunction with the school. The lower part of the classroom walls have been boarded to prevent holes in the plaster. An anti-graffiti coat has been applied to some walls to make cleaning easier and reduce the requirements for redecoration. This is estimated to have saved in the region of £25k. A PVC wall-cladding has been applied where walls were more difficult to keep clean.
- The Facilities Manager from Bellrock has volunteered the school to become a pilot for the site roll-out of Concerto, the bespoke Bellrock CAFM platform. The programme will enable greater visibility of service performance and enable greater efficiencies in terms of logging and executing tasks.
Achievement
The school is held up by Bellrock as the flagship contract in the education sector and the facilities manager was recently awarded group employee of the month. The team consistently exceeds expectations and is held in extremely high regard by the school and council senior leadership.
The Diocese of Leeds has 15 high schools and several primary schools that fall under the diocese’s decision to transition to academies. This includes Cardinal Heenan. Bellrock, with its significant experience in managing academies and the transition process, including PFI contracts transitioning to academy status, has been introduced as a potential partner to support this process.
The ultimate achievement is that the school has only closed on three occasions in the 18 years since it opened all which were as a result of bus companies not being able to run the services.
