A BALANCING ACT MANAGING SUMMER PROJECTS

Pamela Muir recounts the challenges of delivering major projects across the summer holidays and offers some suggestions on how to get the most out of this invaluable time in the school year.

Being Bursar is always a balancing act and nowhere is that more evident than when planning major works. We experience myriad tensions. There are advantages to delivering infrastructure projects when there is no one on campus but we also have to maximise revenue generation from our assets. We want to take advantage of an empty campus but our teams and contractors also take holidays. An empty campus can be a false friend; there is a hard deadline when the school opens so project-overruns are a big problem.

Like many independent schools, we try to maximise the income we generate from our campus. During the summer, we host the Gordonstoun International Summer School, an extraordinarily broad programme that encompasses everything from computing to bush craft and tall ship sailing. During Easter, we run our Active Revision course, which uses neuroscience to increase cognition and improve memory ahead of GCSE and SQA exams. Interspersed between these courses, we host weddings, national rugby and football team training courses and other educational gatherings like Tae Kwando and drama camps. This limits the extent of the refurbishment activities we can undertake – but we do squeeze major works in!

So how do we ensure that we strike the right balance?

Of course, the planning for most works starts long before they take place. For us, the starting point was back in 2019, when we developed a masterplan for new buildings on our campus and a long-term capital investment plan to fund the activity. Our vision, to be delivered in our centenary year of 2034, is of a campus that maximises our ability to provide sector-leading character education long into the future.

We have a rolling five-year plan with high-level capital expenditure allocated to each project. For works like redecoration, refurbishment, new roofs, etc, our very capable Head of Estates and Project Co-ordinator have good relationships with local contractors. We carry out tendering processes for big projects where there are multiple contractors available (more on that later!) and then put in place detailed planning and monitoring for the

works. Our Project Co-ordinator has a surveying background, so she supervises each project and signs it off to ensure it meets our standards.

Not all of our buildings can be refurbished, and we are four years into the masterplan that will see us build a new classroom village and replace some of our boarding houses. But, in parallel, we need to work to preserve our heritage buildings which have global significance as the places where our new King, his father, Prince Philip, and other members of the Royal family were educated, as well as being the birthplace of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and The Round Square Conference. F