New School Build - do you take anything?

[HereIGoAgain2601]

As others have said it’s important to think about the costs of replacing down the line if you do manage to get “all” or mostly new everything. Personally I’d still push for everything all new and back down from there. There will be some stuff you can keep or if you’re in a Trust you could send the better stuff to another school that’s in need.

 

We have a number of BSF / PFI schools in our Trust - everything IT wise was replaced when they moved in 10-15 years ago. They are really fortunate in a way as they’ve had 10 gig connectivity with Cisco kit for years. It’s a good job CTC came down the pipeline as we couldn’t afford to replace all of the kit now though.

 

The schools have forever found themselves having to find huge chunks of money in one budget cycle as all of the desktops went EOL at the same time etc.

 

Sadly you tend to find the first few years after BSF the IT budget got cut as everything was new and shiny. Either that or the managed IT providers were siphoning money off for various dubious projects…

[mikeprice]

It is a problem if all the kit needs replacing at the same time

 

which does mean that keeping the newer stuff from the old school has advantages

 

assuming a policy of replacement on a schedule that the school management will stick to

[Stevecee]

HI

 

So we had a school that had been planned for BSF then continued by LA after BSF was ended, consequently, budgets were trimmed including IT, and the build was delayed by some time.

 

The Head thankfully had been putting money aside towards the move so when it actually happened there was some money available to provide new interactive screens etc. Whenever we needed new kit (CCTV etc) it was brought with the idea that it could be integrated to the new school's system.

 

Initially we moved the servers qnd desktops as they did have some life in them, these were replaced a year or so into the new school.

 

What we did find, however, was that the switching etc was specced when the project was first thought of and not updated when the build was actually started. I found that I had issues with things like the Aruba wifi controller being end of life immediately and struggling to get this to work with the iPads we had purchased for the pupils to use (despite being assured that they would be fine).

 

So my advice is to keep a close eye on the spec and the expected life cycle of the installation. If you can put some money aside for those things that aren't part of the build but will need installing. also any new kit that you need to get should be able to come across and fit into your new school.

 

HTH

 

Steve

[mikeprice]

hat makes a very god point that I had not thought about

 

If s project takes several years to go from plan to completion then you need to review the spec at least avery year and make sure everyone knows that this is happening

 

It may even reduce prices if you are lucky!!

[chris11256]

Following this as someone who is also going to be involved in a new build. Whole school is moving to a purpose-built building, current ETA is January 2025 for the move.

[mavhc]

My main advice about moving to a new building: get internet installed first, it's never too early to get it scheduled

[JATSO]

All depends how close you are to the SLT, in the 4 cases that I have been part of a new build project I have been asked to put a wish list in, we were given a budget and I worked with that bought what the head teacher agreed and collated the invoices forwarded them onto the finance team.

I was also involved in onsite meetings if it concerned IT.

The one time they never asked was when they decided that the CCTV supplier would put their own huge server rack on wheels in the server room, it took up a 3rd of the room floor space for 1 rack server and router looked ridiculous and was a pain to work around.

Always try and keep some of the existing kit if its worth keeping and you have the space, you never know when you will need a workaround for an issue that will surely come.

[mullet_man]

H, don't know where to post this so thought I'd try General chat -

 

Just a question to the tech's that have had or are in the process of a new build school.

1-do you take any of your networking kit - switches/servers/wifi (laptops and desktops would go i guess)

2-do you get a choice of switches/wifi/etc if the above question is no

 

ta

 

steve

How far are you into your plans, along with that I'd look at things like amount of sockets, electric sockets etc in offices, classrooms.

 

I moved to a PFI school a few years after it was built that had grand plans of all wireless devices and the IT rooms were all laptops and no network sockets, retro fitting power and data is costly.

 

Locations of floor boxes (avoid these if you can all ours in are stupid places) offices with 2 network sockets in the floor when the room could fit like 3 people in it.

 

On the actual device side my previous school also happened to have a new build and our owners said anything younger than 3 years old could come over in terms of client devices.

Edited October 11, 2022 by mullet_man