How many techies should we have for our site?

[tosca925]

Just asking the question to fellow collegues. This will be our set up as from September 2007

7 Buildings on one site connected by fibre backbone
40 Admin PC's
150 Staff Laptops
800 Curriculum PC's
16 2003 Servers
68 IWB & Proj

Website to manage
VLE to manage
CMiS & ePortal
Sims for just finance
Video Conferencing
EPortfolios to update
Exchange
WSUS
Sophos EM
Kitchen till systems
Media lessons studies to support
Podcassting lessons to support


Plus all the usual delights


With no proper training given what so ever by the school to any of us.

I will reveal twe have in a couple of days.

[bishopsgarthstockton]

I think 3 - 4max

[Geoff]

We have about half the amount of kit/buildings/etc you have. We have a NM, me the Senior tech, plus two more techs. However we also send one of the techs out on a few half days to primary schools (probably adds up to about 2 days a week).

Anyway, I'd err on the side of caution, so five (assuming your using 'tech' as a general term)..

[Ric_]

It also depends on how you manage the systems. If you have a policy of regularly replacing machines you will have little overhead from hardware maintenance - especially if they are always in warranty.

If you have a centralised way to discover and repair faults (e.g. NetSupport Manager), this also helps.

There is also the question of how much non-technical work you do... video editting, random MIS stuff, etc.

I am all alone and manage almost 300 clients (laptops, workstations and thin clients) but don't have any where near as many IWBs, etc.

So, assuming that you don't make life too hard for yourself, I would have thought maybe 2 full time and 1 term time.

[Friez]

We're running almost the same setup on 2 people. New suites and a VR suite to be built by the government for next year too. Still only 2 of us. Fun times.

[ittech]

yeh 2 or 3 should cover that.

[simongrahamuk]

I'd go for four, but you're probably going to say two.

Two Full time and two Term Time Only.

[_Bat_]

Originally Posted by tosca925

Just asking the question to fellow collegues. This will be our set up as from September 2007

7 Buildings on one site connected by fibre backbone
40 Admin PC's
150 Staff Laptops
800 Curriculum PC's
16 2003 Servers
68 IWB & Proj

Website to manage
VLE to manage
CMiS & ePortal
Sims for just finance
Video Conferencing
EPortfolios to update
Exchange
WSUS
Sophos EM
Kitchen till systems
Media lessons studies to support
Podcassting lessons to support


Plus all the usual delights


With no proper training given what so ever by the school to any of us.

I will reveal twe have in a couple of days.

Do you mind if I ask where you work?

[djm968]

One “hands on” NM (paying him/her a sensible salary) and three technicians.

[bossman]

Becta guidelines stipulate that if you have a manned helpdesk and your staff are average IT literate (God help us) then you will need approx 1 technician to every 150 workstations. If on the other hand your staff are IT iliterate then Becta states you should have approx 1 technician per 50 workststions.

tosca925: Under these guidelines then i would say you either need 6-7 plus one NM or 18-20 plus one NM depending on how IT literate your Staff are.

If they are anything like ours i would think the latter but i don't think for one minute you have anywhere near what you need.

Good hunting my friend

[bandgeekmafia78]

We've got 1NM 1 full-time and 1 term-time PLUS 9 primary schools to look after. Seems to work fine, and we are a pretty massive school.

[sidewinder]

We have almost the same as that, although you have a few more PC's and double our servers

We have 6 staff altogether
NM, Me (sort of a senior tech similar to Geoff), and one tech are all full time

3 more are term time only. 1 of those supports primary schools, 1 of those does mostly classroom support and the other 1 is on site, altough he helps out primaries a day or so per week

So in essence we get by with 4 staff in terms of technical support
However we only have minimal involvement in SIMS and we dont have Exchange.

I would say 5 - 6 staff would be what you need there

[acrobson]

Under good old BSF we will have 1 NM at a central neutral point who covers 3 comprehensive schools when they are requested to attend site and on site 1 senior ICTO and an assistat ICTO (ICTO - ICT Officer)

Thats to cover approx
300 curriculum clients
30 admin
5 windows 2003 servers
75 interactive set ups
24/7 on call for conference hiring
and the rest!

[trekmad]

I would say 4 to include:

1 Senior NM
1 Assistant NM or IT Manager
1 Senior Technician
1 Technician

The two technicians would be involved in fire fighting most of their time leaving the required time to manage the servers and databases while managing the department.

Depending on the amount of lesson support you have to give this may increase to 5.

[tosca925]

Well there is two of us........and we cant cope or afford another tech :-(