Are we building schools for the future

Building Schools for the Future. As a name, it’s very New Labour, but it works quite well when you think about it. The question is: will it do what it says on the tin? Before excavator has even been put to earth, critics are warning that this procurement route, invented to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in England, could lead to a generation of buildings that will barely do, let alone inspire.

The government has high aspirations. The schools must be “transformational”, meaning that they should turn out better-educated children than current schools.

Getting the design right is critical. The environment in which teachers teach and pupils learn has been shown to have a direct impact on how well pupils do. But CABE, the government-appointed authority on good design, is warning that the first wave of BSF schools may be missing the mark in this respect. “Design quality is significantly under-weighted,” says CABE director of education Matt Bell of the assessment method used to select consortia. “It only accounts for about 6% in the PfS matrix – much too little.”

Many of the BSF programmes are kicking off with a competitive tender for a bundle of PFI schools to select a long-term partner .

According to CABE PFI is not a star performer in the good design stakes. A survey of 52 of the 124 secondary schools completed between 2000 and 2005 classed 50% of them as mediocre or poor. All but one of the 10 worst performers were PFI, with only three PFI schools in the top 10. Forget inspirational, some of these schools failed on basics such as having corridors that are wide enough for two lines of children, or classrooms that provide enough natural daylight.

Defining good design, let alone transformational design, is a pretty challenging proposition. “We all instinctively know a good design when we see it but it’s very much more difficult if not impossible to give a list of criteria or boxes to tick,” says Tony Mrowicki, head of design management at Taylor Woodrow. “I think of buildings that take my breath away. They have something that makes them very special. It’s not just the fabric of the building, it’s the staff, the pupils, the whole environment.”

CABE insists good design can be quantified, identifying elements under the headings of build quality, functionality and impact to tie in with the Design Quality Indicator (DQI) scheme developed with the Construction Industry Council.

The contractor is often cast as the bad guy when PFI or D&B produce uninspiring buildings. But there are many reasons why school designs can go wrong. CM wanted to find out what the necessary ingredients are to get a design right. So we asked several firms involved in the BSF process. Here’s our list and our grades for how BSF’s doing do far.

1 A brilliant brief

You are a head teacher and you’re going to get a new school. Exciting. But the chances are that you’ve never commissioned a building before.

You may be bursting with ideas about your new building, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you, together with governors and the Local Education Authority, will produce a good brief.

This is a bit of a gripe for contractors. And rightly so according to CABE’s research, which shows that the quality of the brief had a direct impact on the quality of the design. “The seeds for the design are sown before we get involved,” says Tony Mrowicki, of Taylor Woodrow, part of the Paradigm consortium which is preferred bidder at Sheffield. “A lot of the key principles are established, an outline planning application will have been submitted which begins to establish the footprint, points of access, areas for car parking. It’s not that these are necessarily wrong, it’s just that by virtue of the process, we have been excluded from that part of it.”

The first-time clients do get help. CABE “enablers” provide strategic advice at the briefing stage and there is a client adviser who helps on detail, although CABE wants the role and scope for the adviser to be more clearly defined.

Barry White, director of education for Skanska, the first to officially form a local education partnership (LEP) with Bristol, says that the quality of brief varies and it is something Skanska considers when deciding whether or not to bid: “When we are looking at projects

we are going to bid for we look at the authority and say have they got an experienced team in place who have delivered projects in the past as part of our evaluation.”

Could do better but this grade is likely to rise with later phases.

2 The right architect

If you pick a good one, you’re OK, according to CABE’s research, which shows that although the same contractor can produce schools of varying design quality, the same architects turn out the same quality of school.

A track record in education projects would seem like a good place to start, although this is not always the case. One architect, who didn’t want to be identified, was horrified at the goings-on in one big architectural firm working on big PFI school jobs. “They were getting year out students and students who were doing evening work to do the design for a school bid. There would be absolute howlers in there.

“The problem is the fees are so low, it is not in the interest of firms doing these schools to let experienced designers work on them.”

Wrowicki says personality is important when selecting an architect. “People skills are particularly important. Schools are fairly unique because there is a direct relationship with the building users.”

Stuart Rothery, design director at Amec, which is on the shortlist for a BSF project at Knowsley, agrees that a combination of track record and a culture of teamworking are key. “You don’t necessarily need the sort of practice that wants to see its name in lights. That may lead to very high costs in maintenance and high cap ex costs in construction.”

CABE’s Matt Bell warns that there won’t be enough specialist schools architects to go around in a few years. By wave 6, practices that major in school design will have a lot of work.

B. Consortia can track down the right architects now, but this grade could suffer in a few years.

3 Time

Ask anyone about how to get the design right and they will talk about time spent with the “stakeholders”, in this case the local education authority (LEA), governors, teachers, pupils and even the wider community. The problem for the first schools built for each LEA under BSF is that there have been several parties all vying for that time to prepare their bids.

There isn’t enough time. Each bidder will get three or four meetings with user groups spread over the bidding period. Once they’re preferred bidder the design they’ve got to by then will go forward for the planning application.

In an ideal world, architects would have much more interaction with the building’s users. “The way the contracts are set up, we cannot approach the end user. It’s all very controlled because the client is the joint venture vehicle,” says the disgruntled architect. “The consortium want to limit contact because as soon as you involve the teachers is gets too specific. They want to minimise the amount of input.”

On a more positive note, there should be more time for end user consultation in subsequent phases of school builds once the local education partnership (LEP) between the LEA and consortium has been formed because the consortium won’t be in a competitive situation.

B. More time with stakeholders in later phases should be a key strength of BSF in the future.

4 perfect prototypes

Skanska, which heads up the first consortia to have signed on the dotted line, plumped to team up with Wilkinson Eyre, one of the architects commissioned by the government to produce “exemplar designs” for schools. Barry White, Skanska’s director of education, says they chose Wilkinson Eyre because they had worked with the practice before and because their exemplar design looked both “transformational” and “deliverable”.

However, the exemplar design wasn’t forced onto the four schools which make up the first wave of Bristol’s programme, it was offered as a choice. Two schools went for it, two didn’t.

Amec is developing its own exemplar designs. Rothery believes that exemplars are absolutely key, and will help overcome the limited timescales in designing schools. He sees exemplars as multi-faceted, taking into account elements such as supply chain, cost plans, whole life costs and FM. “If you have got a system for taking on board current innovation, learning and best practice and sharing that information then you have got an ability to start the process further down the line.”

It is early days for any exemplar, says Rothery, not least because the new schools are trying to deliver a transformation in educational outcomes, something which is neither tried nor tested.

C. At the moment, but getting exemplar designs right could boost this grade

5 The negotiator

So who’s responsible for refereeing between the aspirational architects, the cost planner, the head teacher, the local authority and whatever Tom, Dick or Harry may be using the school extra-curricular? Enter the design manager, a rare beast who must understand all elements and stages of a construction project.

Success in this area seems to be key in achieving a good design within the constraints of time and budget. “The primary role of the design manager is to mediate and find a best value compromise that will achieve the desired overall result,” says Taylor Woodrow’s Wrowicki. “The design manager acts as a conduit.”

Amec’s Rothery describes the role as the “kingpin” that connects into every part of the process. “It is a very complex role,” he says. “The industry does not have too many design managers that fully understand the process of design management at the front end and the back end,” he adds.

Due to the scarcity of such know-alls, firms such as Skanska, Amec and Taylor Woodrow employ design managers from a variety of backgrounds, architects, construction managers, cost consultants to make sure they have the full range of expertise.

C. Good design managers will be in short supply, so expect this grade to drop in later stages

6 Pounds per square foot

Let’s not beat about the bush. Budgets for the Schools for the Future are tight: £5.57 per square metre, compared with £9.30 per per square metre for the City Academies.

Of course, while everybody we spoke to talked of affordability being a “challenge”, no one could say it would limit how well designed schools will be. “Affordability is a key thing,” says Wrowicki. “Within the business there is a recognition that unless one is affordable, you are not in the game at all.”

Rothery says: “It’s about getting a balance between a design goal which is to make a statement and producing something that is buildable and affordable.” He warns that expectations must be managed as early as possible, otherwise the clients get disappointed and the designers get fed up as they have to redesign in time that doesn’t exist in fee terms.

More pounds per square foot could allow for more space, an easy way to build in flexibility for the future, but that’s not an option on such a tight budget. White says that flexibility can be achieved with clever design.

C. Tight budgets are a limiting factor in achieving a “transformational” design.

7 Feedback

The idea of creating school buildings which improve students’ ability to learn is a great one. But because the BSF projects are coming thick and fast, there is a danger that mistakes will be repeated rather than learned from. This is a key concern for CABE. “Post-occupancy evaluation is essential,” says Bell. But at the moment this is not a compulsory part of BSF.

In June this year the British Council for School Environments (BCSE) was introduced to “find out what works and make sure as many people as possible know about it”, according to director

Ty Goddard. Part forum, part advocacy, part think-tank, BCSE will try to find a common language for architects, constructors and

educationalists, he adds. The reality may be somewhat different. “How much will people share of emerging knowledge with each other? You cannot imagine that at this stage people will give away intellectual property,” says White.

D. It’s good to share, but not very competitive

Conclusion

Though early days for BSF, the programme will be judged on the first schools that it turns out, the schools that were procured in competition. Inevitably these won’t be as “inspiring and uplifting” as later ones, partly because of the limited design time and partly because no one yet knows what is going to work in terms of transforming educational output.

There will be changes in the way BSF projects are procured. And there will also be changes in the way that contractors view design which will result in better schools than under straight PFI.

Barry White offers this note of hope: “There has been quite a big shift in the attitude of the contracting community. People are thinking a lot more about educational outcomes, not the building. If you are going to be long-term partners with someone, you have to understand their business as well as your own.” cm