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This is where the money goes.

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The council did an energy efficiency survey of our school, with some really great savings shown by converting the rest of the school to LED strip lights. Currently 2 rooms are fully LED. To do the rest of the school (it's small) would require 13 new LED strip light tubes. Based on what we paid for the others, this would be about £250. The contractor's estimate is £5000 for the same job. This is common in my experience and has been going on for ever. It is quite depressing when schools are so desperate for money. We had a program of replacing the lights anyway and will do this ourselves but plenty of schools just go with the council contractor. 

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Removed User 31 Jan 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

Don't you have a caretaker?!

7
 muppetfilter 31 Jan 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

You have to factor in Insurance , Wages, Office space, Vans , Tools , DBS Checks, up to date City and Guilds certification, Risk assessments, work at height training and appropriate work at height equipment and all other compliances the council will request like CHAS membership and of course profit. Its not just DIY and nipping to Screwfix.

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In reply to Removed User:

No, we have myself,   our school business manager and a fully insured handyman.  We will do it ourselves.

In reply to blackmountainbiker:

Not saying that the contractor's quote is good value (I've no idea), but are those comparable figures? I'd have thought the cost of the lights alone would be at least £250 before factoring in time/labour and other associated costs for someone to actually do the work.

Edit: I was assuming that you meant removing 13 old light fittings entirely and rewiring in new ones, rather than just changing out tubes, which struck me as probably a good few hours of someone's time. I realise I might have misread - if it is just a quick job of replacing tubes then £250 does sound more realistic!

Post edited at 10:57
Removed User 31 Jan 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

If it's just swapping the bulbs out it should be trivial no?

4
 Andy Clarke 31 Jan 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

I assume this was from an external private contractor approved by the council? I can remember the days when the council's own Property Services departments who would undertake a programme of maintenance and improvement agreed with the school with no charge on the school budget. Of course, the ideological war on LEAs and the marketisation of education through academies put paid to all that. Anyone who thinks these changes have led to greater cost-effectiveness has never been anywhere near a school budget. And anyone who thinks they've led to higher standards has never been anywhere near a league table.

Post edited at 11:02
 Dr.S at work 31 Jan 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

My Dad was headmaster of a grant maintained school back in the late 90's, and was able to directly arrange contracts with local contractors to do work. At some point they went back to LEA control and found costs increased by 3-4 fold.

Same contractors.

The contractors (who he had a good working relationship with) said they had to increase their margin to that extent because the LEA's changed their minds so many times that they kept losing work and so needed to price that in.

I see the same in the university sector - pretty maddening!

 deepsoup 31 Jan 2023
In reply to Removed User:

Perhaps a bit too trivial for the contractor's liking if they've v busy - it's pretty standard practice to put in a silly quote for a job you don't want to do rather than just saying "sorry, not interested". 

It's actually quite heartening to hear that it's still possible for a school to have the wherewithal to do a simple job like this 'in house' tbh.

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 RobAJones 31 Jan 2023
In reply to Dr.S at work:

> My Dad was headmaster of a grant maintained school back in the late 90's, and was able to directly arrange contracts with local contractors to do work. At some point they went back to LEA control and found costs increased by 3-4 fold.

My more recent experience is, sort of, the opposite or perhaps it is indicative of a continued decline. On a day to day basis, on becoming part of a Academy Trust, something as simple as getting more paper for the photocopier involved contacting the facilities management HQ in Ireland and waiting for them to sort it, previously it has been an email, phone call or verbal request directly to the site staff or pick it up yourself from the unlocked store room. At the other end of the scale IMO we paid about 30% over the odds for our new school, basically because nobody had experience of dealing with contractors. I basing that on a comparison with Birmingham LEA (I think, Andy might know) who employed someone who knew what they were doing to negotiate on their behalf, for their dozen or so academies, that were built under the same Building Schools for the future program.

In reply to Stuart Williams: No, we will just change out the tubes. There is no need for anything else really but maybe the contractor wad envisaging changing the fittings too. The report doesn't specify. 

 Andy Clarke 31 Jan 2023
In reply to RobAJones:

The way Birmingham approached Building Schools for the Future was very impressive. There's some interesting detail here: http://www.architectspractice.com/page2/page9/page10/page10.html. Sadly, in 2010 the money dried up and Gove began the anti-progressive crusade. A dozen years later the damage to the nation's youth and future is impressively extensive. 

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 gethin_allen 01 Feb 2023
In reply to muppetfilter:

Accepting that there will be many on other costs incurred by getting a company in, it still looks like a crazy price.

You could get the parts for about £30 a light (£390), 2 people could do the job in a day unless there is any difficult access issues so say £400 wages including the employers costs because these people won't be big earners for a simple job like this. Double this number as a really hash way of covering extra business costs and you're looking at ~£1600.

Considering that LED strip lights would be saving about 70% energy wise over a tube light you then need to work out how long it would take you to recoup the cost of changing the lights. At £5000 that calculation looks much less favourable.

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 sbc23 01 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

On the technical side, there are two kinds of LED 'tube' that can be fitted to an existing fluorescent fitting. 

Plug & Play (Type A) tubes will just go straight in, without any modifications to the ballast etc. 

Direct (Type B) need someone (with brain or an electrician) to open the fitting and bypass the ballast & starter arrangement. 

Type B is the preferred solution, no future ballast maintenance/failure and the tubes are cheaper. 

However, the best solution is to change the whole fitting to a modern LED with the correct reflectors & efficiency. Size the fitting for the light you need/want, not just to match the length of the existing. 

You should also check/ensure you aren't altering the emergency lighting arrangements. Or at least take this as opportunity to fix that if it's a problem.  

 The New NickB 01 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

Maybe they didn’t want the job, maybe they are taking the piss, maybe the job is a bit more complicated than you think. In all cases, I would be surprised if there weren’t other options. You have of course outlined one.

Council procurement isn’t like Covid PPE contracts, they have to follow the rules, which involve competitive processes.

 The New NickB 01 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

> No, we will just change out the tubes. There is no need for anything else really but maybe the contractor wad envisaging changing the fittings too. The report doesn't specify. 

Here is the problem. Contractor should be stating exactly what they will be doing, but also te client should be providing an appropriate specification.

Realistically, small jobs are probably better handled by an in-house maintenance team (appropriately scaled across a number of assets), but the fragmentation of services, particularly in education has made this more difficult.

In reply to Andy Clarke:

> Anyone who thinks these changes have led to greater cost-effectiveness has never been anywhere near a school budget.

Anyone who thinks that the use of private contractors is less cost effective would obviously have an idea of the cost of the former property services department and their overheads before deciding. Were they good value for money?

 The New NickB 01 Feb 2023
In reply to Thugitty Jugitty:

In my experience plenty of maintenance type services have been brought back on house, because it does present better value for money.

 artif 01 Feb 2023
In reply to Thugitty Jugitty:

Depends

Many of these authorities / large businesses require approved contractors/suppliers to carry out any work. Getting on an approved list can be expensive, but once on, its a gravy train.

Not forgetting the "incentives" the contractors provide (they all cost money)

In reply to The New NickB:

I agree. In my experience of other sectors some have brought maintenance services back in-house and some haven’t. Hopefully based on a proper understanding of all the costs, not just whether something appears “free” at the point of use. That was the point I was making. 

Post edited at 15:35
 The Lemming 01 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

You think that's bad?

My local hospital bought a second hand porta cabin from a building site and referbed it for winter pressures and shizzle.

I found out 3 weeks ago that the refurb, not the cabin, cost £1.3m.

The refurb was so inadequate that the nursing staff refused to work in it, so it got used as a spare ward ie just kept empty.

To put this into context, our local ambulance station has been in temporary digs for a year in second hand container buildings on council land. The whole setup cost £1m.

How the fec can a single porta cabin on hospital grounds cost £1.3m without somebody taking the piss?

 RobAJones 01 Feb 2023
In reply to Thugitty Jugitty:

> Anyone who thinks that the use of private contractors is less cost effective would obviously have an idea of the cost of the former property services department and their overheads before deciding. Were they good value for money?

Probably an extreme example, and due to previous mismanagement but we spent in the order of 30k in legal fees to terminate a contract that the previous Head and MAT CEO had signed for their facilities management. It was 3 times the budget the school had when it was still under LEA control and in old ramshackle buildings, bringing it in house in the new build (and I'm no fan of some of United Learnings in house departments) reduced our outgoing to (not by) a fifth of what the previous Trust were paying. Unsurprisingly the previous Trust were in financial difficulties and effectively folded, who sorted out their debts? 

 RobAJones 01 Feb 2023
In reply to Thugitty Jugitty:

> Hopefully based on a proper understanding of all the costs, not just whether something appears “free” at the point of use. That was the point I was making. 

A fair point, but from a school management perspective, it has been used, in the same way that unfunded teacher pay rises have, as a way cut the funds available to improve the education of students, but enable politicians to claim they are providing record levels of funding to headteachers. 

 neilh 01 Feb 2023
In reply to The Lemming:

Does that not depend on the refurb and what was done. I can hazard a guess that for a hospital the requirements are different and that maybe for what they wanted there might have been long leadtimes and this was the quickest way to deliver. It’s easy to throw comments around without knowing what went on and weighing it all up. 

3
 neilh 01 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

May not be unreasonable. I was surprised by how expensive it was to replace all my strip lights in my factory with suitable LED ones. And that was from my in house electrician doing it. So no outside contractors involved. 
 

All fittings had to be replaced and upgraded. It’s not just the tubes. 

 Andy Clarke 01 Feb 2023
In reply to Thugitty Jugitty:

> Anyone who thinks that the use of private contractors is less cost effective would obviously have an idea of the cost of the former property services department and their overheads before deciding. Were they good value for money?

It became possible to do reasonable comparisons as marketisation gathered pace and schools were forced to decide whether to buy back into council Property Services provision from their devolved budget or arrange all their maintenance and improvement work through private contractors. We found that Property Services still gave good value for money. We ran a large in-house Facilities team (including a number of part-time early retirees who had a fantastic range of skills). Hence we only used Property Services for stuff we couldn't handle ourselves. It's hard to over-estimate the value of working with people who know your buildings and equipment well - particularly since my school was a living museum of school design through the ages, from an 1880's Board School to brand-new blocks. I still shudder when I hear the words "boiler breakdown."  Sometimes as a test we'd also get a private contractor quote. And yes, Property Services were more cost-effective. Every pound mattered to me, since when I took up the Headship the school had a £250,000 deficit.

Don't get me started on the cost-effectiveness of buying in private educational consultants versus the old in-house LEA inspection and development teams. Shortly after I retired I was offered a couple of weeks work at twice what I'd been earning as the head of a large and successful secondary school. That's ludicrous.

1
 The Lemming 01 Feb 2023
In reply to neilh:

> It’s easy to throw comments around without knowing what went on and weighing it all up. 

The nursing staff know what went on, and they decided that it was too dangerous to treat A&E patients so they refused to work in there until it was fit for purpose.

Surely £1.3m would be enough to convert one room less than 20 meters in length to be fit for purpose?

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Thanks. That’s interesting.

 montyjohn 01 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

This reminds me of a time when I became an unwilling land lord and lived about 300 miles away so decided to rent it out as a "managed" property.

Had a call from the estate agents about a leaky gutter that looked like it was going to collapse. Quote to repair was £800 by their partner contractor.

It sounded steep so I asked a local builder to give me a quote. When he called me back to give me the price he said it's fixed. It just needed clicking back together. He asked me to wire over £40.

I was happy with that.

 neilh 01 Feb 2023
In reply to The Lemming:

Most people would have no idea of the true cost of these things.

 owlart 02 Feb 2023
In reply to montyjohn:

I dare say a significant proportion of that £800 was due to go back to the Estate Agents too.

When I first rented, the Managing Agency insisted that an insurance policy was taken out which had to include a certain clause (I forget the details now). Oddly, the only company offering such a policy ( I checked with a few brokers), was the one they'd set up!

In reply to neilh:

You can just replace the tubes though, which is what we've done for most of them so far.

 neilh 03 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

Its usually the whole fitting not just the tube.Possibly suggesting that you may have the wrong fittings?Maybe that is why there is the cost difference and in a school you really do not want these things to be wrong electrically or else it might come back and bite you in other ways.

There is usally a reason for cost differnce of that proportion and if I were you I would do more digging around to figure it out instead of just having a go at the contractors costings.

3
In reply to neilh:

No, you really can just replace the tubes, they pop right into the existing fittings and you replace the starter with a dummy starter. It is much better than replacing fittings which requires redecorating too.

 neilh 03 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

I use to think that until my in house electrician corrected me. So might be worth double checking that the  fittings are actually suitable and it’s not some form of compromise. Just because you did it that way does not mean it’s correct electrically. 

1
 Phil79 03 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

They might have also priced it deliberately high, as they don't need the work.

 Heike 03 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

This is nuts, I have a similar story. My colleague moving into my office wanted to replace the very old office chair and it is 500 pounds for a new bog standard chair. To paint our tiny wee office room which probably hasn't been painted for 30 years was quoted at 1400 pounds. I could do this in a few hours for much less and I could source a very good new chair for maybe 150. But no, we have to through procurement.

 owlart 03 Feb 2023
In reply to neilh:

Do you have some link to show they're not safe to just retrofit? Having replaced the tubes in my parents kitchen with LED tubes (and 'dummy' starters) over Christmas, I'd quite like to check I'm not going to kill them as a result!

 neilh 03 Feb 2023
In reply to owlart:

I just asked my in-house electrician 

Post edited at 19:17
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 gethin_allen 03 Feb 2023
In reply to owlart:

There are products available on the market to simply replace the tube. There are other products that need special drivers etc. The second type are usually full luminare type items. There are many other products on the market that are designed to replace the whole fitting, tube and reflector, which contain the led driver are just wired in directly to the switched feed.

If you followed the instructions then you'll be fine. If you wired the second type detailed above to a direct 230v AC or to a fluorescent tube starter ans ballast they'd break immediately. 

You'd have to be a bit thick to confuse the different types. 

In reply to neilh:

In the private sector, people involved in that £1.3m sh*tshow would have been fired. Reckon that happened at the NHS? No chance. NHS is packed full of unfireable useless middle management types. 

Post edited at 21:16
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 artif 03 Feb 2023
In reply to GripsterMoustache:

> In the private sector, people involved in that £1.3m sh*tshow would have been fired. Reckon that happened at the NHS? No chance. NHS is packed full of unfireable useless middle management types.

They wouldn't, I've seen it happen more than once

 neilh 04 Feb 2023
In reply to GripsterMoustache:

That’s a bit of a myth. There are daily mistakes etc made like that in the private sector and you need a lot more than that to “fire” somebody.

that may have been the correct price for the spec that the Trust wanted on the portakabin. Just because it’s alot of money does not mean it’s the wrong price. 

Post edited at 07:51
 neilh 04 Feb 2023
In reply to gethin_allen:

Nicely explained.  I suspect the school in question is not getting the same “light” by changing the tubes that way.

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 Mr Fuller 04 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

Yep, a good example of wasting cash, and there are plenty of others. Dozens of non-teaching ‘senior leaders’ on high wages that do not contribute to education, vanity projects around schools, and I’m aware of one school - state funded - who have bought property to enable senior members in the academy trust to  visit occasionally (and of course go on holiday). The latter school sacked experienced teachers and hired NQTs because they were strapped for cash…

 Andy Clarke 04 Feb 2023
In reply to Mr Fuller:

>  I’m aware of one school - state funded - who have bought property to enable senior members in the academy trust to  visit occasionally (and of course go on holiday). The latter school sacked experienced teachers and hired NQTs because they were strapped for cash…

Good grief. Where on earth was this?

 Mr Fuller 04 Feb 2023
In reply to Andy Clarke:

In the North West.

 owlart 04 Feb 2023
In reply to neilh:

> I just asked my in-house electrician 


Thanks.

 owlart 04 Feb 2023
In reply to gethin_allen:

These were sold as drop-in replacements for flourescent tubes. Just swap out the tube and replace the starter with the dummy one. I was just a bit concerned when Neil seemed to suggest even these aren't safe to use.

 fred99 04 Feb 2023
In reply to owlart:

"neilh asked his in-house electrician".

Obviously such electrician was able to use his (her ?) extra sensory perception to identify exactly which light units you had in the first place, and also those which you have replaced them with.

Mind you, being an electrician, the very last thing he (or she ?) would actually do is read the instructions.

 Trustee 04 Feb 2023
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

There's no chance in hell that the job they've quoted for is to change 13 LED tubes if it's £5000. At most, I would think it would be materials (+20% for beer money) and half a days labour (changing 13 tubes shouldn't even take two hours including faffing about getting your kit out of the van and hiding in some office on your phone for a bit). I doubt you'd be looking at even £750, let alone £5000. To be honest, I can't even see a way in which this would get to £5000 even if including changing the lights - it's still probably going to be under £1500 for materials with the new lights and even then, it's only a days labour at most. Obviously this would change if you needed access equipment but given it's a school, I'll assume you don't need a scissor lift or a cherry picker to change them.

All this waffle about insurance, tool cost, insurance, certification etc is nonsense - that should be included in your day rate which at the moment probably doesn't exceed £300 a day.

Ask them for an itemised list if you're in a position to do so, it'd be interesting to see what they've actually priced for.

Post edited at 16:17
 Dax H 05 Feb 2023
In reply to artif:

> Depends

> Many of these authorities / large businesses require approved contractors/suppliers to carry out any work. Getting on an approved list can be expensive, but once on, its a gravy train.

Some can be a gravy train, some are closely scrutinised. I'm 13 months and hundreds of un paid hours in to a tender submission at the moment, hopefully it's close to coming to an end because just in my time alone I'm down about £15k then there is the investment in training, there is a lot of specific stuff we need, you get zero points for not having it, half points for agreeing to put it in place if awarded and full points if you give evedence of it at tender. You can't afford the score mark down so you put it in place first and hope to make it back if you win. 

To be honest frameworks wind me up. Last year I was contacted by United Utilities to investigate why a blower was failing to mix the sludge in a waste tank. I gave them a quote for a day rate and they were delighted but I'm not on their framework... So they went to their maintenance framework partner who came to me but I'm not on their framework either so myself and the partner discussed different frameworks until we found a company that we both dealt with. Ultimately I was working for company A who was subbing to company B who was working direct for the end user. The site manager for UU was very pissed off because their framework partner had a 40% markup on the job but not on my quote, no no no because the company why I was working for put 20% on my quote to the framework partner who then put 40% on the lot. 

What made it worse was the actual problem in the first place, the control for the mixing valves had failed causing the blower to run over pressure and size up so the maintenance company sent it to a motor winders (a lot of motor winders claim they can also do blowers) for repair, they re profiled the claw tips so the clearance that should be .001 of a mm was actually 8mm, ground the head plates and bored out the cylinder so the poor thing was only moving about 10% of the air that it should. The damage was so bad it was a new pump, list price 8k, my price to the company I was working for 6k, add in the 2 lots of mark up and it cost over 10k plus install etc. 

I know government, utilities etc have to follow very specific procurement regulations, competetive tendering etc to prevent fraud, back handers and whatnot but there really needs to be an option to go off framework if there are savings yo be made. That said by the time UU had assessed all my paperwork (as company A had already done to put me on their framework) the savings would be lost and then some. 


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