Advice requested

I am posting this on behalf of a colleague in another school in West Yorkshire.

The school in question's current senior technician is leaving before Summer. *They are considering a number of options for the way forward. *They will be in BSF in under 2 years, and so are unsure if they will be able to fill the position with a full-time member of staff for such a relatively short
period.

They currently have an internal help-desk, who handle the first line of support, user management, consumables etc. *The network is very stable, requiring minimal maintenance bar normal house-keeping. Client PCs are old, and take up more time than anything else. *Several elements of the network are maintained by external suppliers (firewall, connectivity, SIMS, thin client servers).

Should they:

- Get an external company to look after the server support AND a lower-level in-house tech to repair clients, monitor backups, look after imaging, make the appropriate support calls etc
- Get an external company to have a more hands-on role supporting the network as a managed service
- Try and employ a full-time tech with full responsibility for the network and not use an external company

Other options?

I can see myself being back here in a week or so offering an employment opportunity on their behalf, just not sure what level yet.

Thanks for any input,

If it was me, I'd try and get an over-seeing senior technician or network manager on a fixed term contract, perhaps only three or even two days a week to safeguard against rot between now and BSF. In the climate at the moment, you'd stand a good chance of getting somebody with suitable experience for it.

(Mind you, if it was me, I'd be avoiding BSF in the first place, but hey.)

On the other hand, if you're moving to a managed service in 2 years, perhaps it would be good to gradually move towards this during the interim so that staff don't have a horrible shock when their life-support system gets taken away. Tricky.