Article by Darren Dahl
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2015 Net Assets.
It takes a lot of work to keep the facilities at Grand River Academy in tip-top shape. The boys’ boarding school, founded in 1831, stretches out over a campus of about 200 acres in Austinburg, Ohio, and includes more than a dozen classroom buildings and dormitories plus an additional 11 homes in which faculty members live.
Our mission is to educate children, but we came to realize we were spending lots of time managing janitors and the kitchen staff.
Cynthia Kane
Grand River Academy
Until recently, everything from landscaping and preventative maintenance to meal preparation and bus driving was done by staff who worked directly for the school. But two years ago a new headmaster posed a question to Cynthia Kane, Grand River’s business manager and chief financial officer: Would the school be better off outsourcing some of its facilities and operations tasks?
“Our mission is to educate children,” says Kane, “but we came to realize we were spending lots of time managing janitors and the kitchen staff. We wondered if there was a better way.”
Changing Mindsets
The question of whether or not to outsource facilities and operations tasks is one that an increasing number of independent schools have begun to ask, given that routine maintenance and operations typically account for up to 12 percent of a school’s operating budget, writes John H. zumBrunnen, an Atlanta-based construction and building consultant, in NBOA’s By the Numbers and Beyond.
While schools may have little choice but to outsource certain tasks that require highly specialized skillsets, such as maintaining HVAC mechanical systems and elevators, awareness is growing about the potential benefits that come from contracting out other tasks that most schools have historically done in house, such as custodial or landscape work.
To even consider outsourcing, though, requires a change in mindset about the supposed downsides of doing so, especially the higher perceived cost of hiring contractors.
Part of that need is driven by the fact that there is a general shortage among young people interested in entering trade professions, says Bill Keslar, president of Building Solutions in Dallas, especially depending on where a school is located. “There is a supply and demand problem schools are dealing with,” says Keslar, who has been advising independent schools on their campus assets for more than 20 years.
To even consider outsourcing, though, requires a change in mindset about the supposed downsides of doing so, especially the higher perceived cost of hiring contractors. There’s also the fear that once you trade a fulltime staff member for an outsourced contractor, and it doesn’t work out, you’re exposing the school to a significant risk.
While these concerns are valid, says zumBrunnen, outsourcing can often produce better results at a lower price than a full-time staff can.
Just as importantly, outsourcing removes many of the headaches and costs—everything from providing benefits and conducting background checks to paying worker’s compensation—that come along with hiring full- and part-time staff. If a contractor isn’t working out, for example, it usually involves only a phone call to get them removed from the job. “You mitigate a lot of employment risk when you use contractors,” says zumBrunnen.
However, zumBrunnen is also an advocate for taking more of a hybrid approach to the solution. He thinks schools should hire a top-notch facilities manager on staff who can then serve as the conduit for outsourcing relevant tasks. “Today’s buildings take professional people to manage and maintain them,” he says. “You can’t just hire a custodian to bang on the pipes and mop the floors like when I was in high school. You need someone who not only has the right technical and engineering skills, but also knows how to manage people and run a business. If you get the right person, he or she will make the school money.”
Case in point: Ben West was hired as the full-time facilities manager at The Lab School, a day school in Washington, D.C., three years ago after originally arriving at the school as a contractor. West says he now manages a staff of six full-time people and two part-timers.
While West says he feels it’s easier for him to build relationships on campus since he’s an employee, he also relies on contractors as a way to augment his staff’s capabilities in everything from janitorial services to transportation. He also knows that if the person who shows up to work on his HVAC system runs into a question, he or she can call on someone in their company to get the answer. “One of the big pros of outsourcing is that you aren’t just hiring for the position,” he says, “you’re hiring his or her support as well.”
Outsourcing's Advantages
While there can be clear advantages to having at least one full-time facilities person on staff, some independent schools, particularly those with larger campuses, have gone further in what they have outsourced.
Take Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois. The boarding school, founded in 1857, has more than 40 buildings on its 162-acre campus. Given its size, and the fact that services are required around the clock since 48 families live on campus, it’s a big job to clean, maintain and repair what amounts to some 435,000 square feet of space.
That helps explain why the school decided 15 years ago to outsource tasks like landscaping, maintenance, transportation, housekeeping and even the management of its ice rink, says Andrew D. Kerr, the school’s chief administrative officer. “As government regulations increase, a CFO’s time is becoming increasingly spread out over a wide range of responsibilities,” he says. “Anything we can do to better manage what we are doing at a good price which also frees up the CFO’s time is extremely valuable.”
Kerr says Lake Forest Academy has contracted with Sodexo. The food service and facilities management giant has 40 workers based at his school, including a facilities manager who has been managing the day-to-day operations for eight years. Kerr meets with her once a week to get updates and to discuss budgets, long-range strategic plans and major projects. He also meets monthly or quarterly with Sodexo’s district manager and vice president as a way to keep everyone on the same page.
I may be paying a few more dollars by outsourcing than if we did all this in house, but what I am getting back in terms of training, safety and best practices more than compensates for the profit margin we provide the outsourcer.
Andrew D. Kerr
Lake Forest Academy
Some of the most valuable aspects of outsourcing, Kerr says, include that he no longer has to worry about covering for staff who call in sick or, if a big event like graduation is coming up, his manager can easily scale up and bring in extra personnel to help get the job done. He also knows the workers who come to campus are well-trained on the latest OSHA safety standards and industry best practices on aspects like using safe cleaning products.
“I may be paying a few more dollars by outsourcing than if we did all this in house,” Kerr admits. “But what I am getting back in terms of training and making sure everything from safety to best practices are up to date more than compensates for the profit margin we provide the outsourcer.”
Weaving Contractors into the Community
Besides cost, another concern many schools have about outsourcing is the notion that contractors don’t care about the school as much as full-timers would. “It can get uncomfortable to turn over tasks to non-employees that have high contact with a school’s customers like its donors, parents and students,” says Keslar.
But that’s not something David Marcus, the campus business manager at New Community Jewish School [now deToledo School] in West Hills, Calif., is concerned with, because he works hard to make his outsourced staff part of the school’s community. “It often comes down to how outsourced personnel are treated and included in campus events the way faculty are,” he says. “You need to let them know you care.”
Marcus, who oversees an outsourced staff of 12 maintenance personnel and 10 security people, says he invites his contractors to school sports events and plays as well as to eat lunches with students as a way to get them to feel like part of the community. He also gives his workers spirit wear and gear emblazoned with the school’s logo and even a modest year-end monetary gift to reward their good work on campus. “Making time to say thank you really goes a mile,” he says.
No Turning Back
Kane says that Grand River Academy eventually decided to test the outsourcing waters by bidding out the operation of its dining hall. That experiment went so well the school then contracted with a local organization called Ash/Craft, which helps put developmentally disabled adults to work, to take on full-time janitorial duties on campus.
“It’s been a great marriage for us,” says Kane. “We couldn’t be happier with the work they do.” She adds that the six workers on the crew not only bring great skills to the job and pride in their work, they also have integrated well into the school’s community, where they eat lunch alongside students and have even sung karaoke with them.
While Grand River still maintains a three-person maintenance team on staff, it has since outsourced its security team and bus transportation services as well. The school is even considering sourcing out landscaping duties as a way to free up maintenance staff to focus more on building repair and maintenance. In total, Kane says her school has been able to trim its full-time payroll by about 15 positions—while also freeing up her schedule to focus on more long-term strategic plans for the school and other tasks she simply had little time for previously.
When asked if she would consider reevaluating the decision to outsource by bringing tasks back in house, Kane has a simple response: “We would never go back.”
