How do you manage school holiday IT work across multiple sites?

[MinnieTechie]

For those who support more than one school, how do you usually organise onsite work during the holidays?

We’ve got the usual mix coming up: AP changes, switch and cabinet tidying, camera checks, a few small installs, and jobs that need someone physically onsite while the buildings are quieter.

The technical work itself is usually straightforward. The harder part is access, keys, site contacts, evidence and sign-off. We also need to make sure our own safeguarding procedures are followed, especially when several schools need work done during the same period.

We may use Kinettix for some of the onsite field work when our internal team can’t cover every location, but I haven’t settled on what should stay in-house and what can be handed over.

How do others manage this across multiple schools? Do you rely mainly on internal technicians, local contractors, trust-approved suppliers, a field services partner, or a mix depending on the job?

[TechMonkey]

I used labels on MS Planner/ToDo for each site, just to make it easy to differentiate.  You could create a plan per site, or have one plan and a bucket per site, but at least with labels you can have a bucket for hardware things and then filter by site.

 

We use Projects in FreshService now and tag them in that.

[DrBeaker]

 

 

1 hour ago, MinnieTechie said:

For those who support more than one school, how do you usually organise onsite work during the holidays?...
 

 

I TRUST the IT staff who are there to do their jobs. They know what needs doing as they're the ones onsite. 

 

I don't micro-manage them.

I don't dictate to them.

I give them the authority and empowerment to challenge issues and contractors who aren't doing the standard of work I'd expect.

I respect their unique skillset and knowledge for that site.

 

1 hour ago, MinnieTechie said:

...The technical work itself is usually straightforward. The harder part is access, keys, site contacts, evidence and sign-off. We also need to make sure our own safeguarding procedures are followed, especially when several schools need work done during the same period.
 

 

Access, keys, site contacts ... not an IT issue, that's a facilities/site issue.

Signing them into site is a reception/admin/office manager etc issue ... again not an IT issue.

 

All you SHOULD need is a name and contact number (work-supplied mobile preferred) a time they should be there and what work they're there to do.

 

(We often find that info is one-way street as we turn up to rooms, locations etc where site work is taking place e.g. painting, repairs, cleaning etc and no-one had the courtesy to let us know)

 

Don't expect your IT staff to stay late picking up the slop from contractors, ESPECIALLY during the summer time. That's wrong and bad management.

 

Suppliers we've got relationships with/proven work etc.

 

Otherwise the summer can be a busy but should be a 'fun' time of the year for IT teams to get work done without constant interruptions.

 

 

 

[Boredguy]

We use Teams Shifts across the team to show which sites members are going to be at and when, and for holiday works we put together a spreadsheet of all the sites and work planned, then we update Shifts to say where we'll be (if we've not done a runner for time off ourselves).

 

If we have work to do at a Primary school, normally the boss arranges to be there since he's got the keys/alarms, but for the secondaries the site team is normally in so access isn't a problem.

 

If we've got external contractors scheduled, we drop that on the Shift notes and either the tech for that site will be there as normal, or someone else will head over