Making the Most of an Empty Building
The pupils have gone, the corridors are quiet, and for the next six weeks your buildings are yours. For estates and facilities teams, the summer holidays are the one stretch of the year when the disruptive work is actually possible.
The clock starts now. Six weeks sounds generous until you map out everything that needs doing and factor in that September won’t wait. So, the question isn’t how to plan the perfect summer, it’s how to make the most of the weeks you’ve got.
Here’s where to focus.
Triage first: decide what actually has to happen
Before anyone lifts a tool, get clear on priority. Not everything on the wish list will fit, and trying to do it all is how programmes overrun.
A simple order helps. Statutory compliance comes first, anything that affects safety or keeps you legal. Then the work that protects the building’s long-term condition, the jobs that get more expensive the longer they wait. Then the improvements that would be nice but can slip to October half term or the next holiday if time runs short.
Being honest about that third category early is what keeps the essential work on track. It’s better to deliver the critical jobs properly than to spread yourself thin and finish none of them.
Get compliance work locked in
If there’s one thing that has to happen over the summer, it’s the statutory work you can’t do with pupils on site.
Electrical testing, fixed wiring inspections, fire safety checks, water system work, anything that needs systems isolated or areas cleared. An empty building is the only sensible time for it, and falling behind on compliance isn’t an option for a school estate.
For trusts managing several sites, the summer is also the moment to bring consistency across the portfolio, so every school comes back to September on the same compliant footing rather than each one drifting on its own schedule.
Sequence the work so one delay doesn’t sink September
With a fixed deadline and a packed programme, sequencing is everything.
The jobs have dependencies. Decorators can’t start before the electrical first fix is signed off. Flooring can’t go down before the plant rooms finished. Get the order wrong and a delay early on pushes everything behind it towards that immovable September date.
This is where live visibility of your works earns its keep. When you can see the whole programme in one place, track it daily and spot a slippage before it becomes a crisis, you keep control of the timeline. Our BiO® service management platform was built for exactly this, giving estates teams real-time data on planned and reactive works across every site, which matters most when the days are counting down.
Move fast on anything with a lead time
The single biggest risk to a summer programme is waiting on something that won’t arrive in time.
If a job depends on a part, a piece of plant or a specialist trade, find out the lead time today, not in week three. A boiler that takes five weeks to arrive needs ordering in the first days of the holiday, not halfway through. The same goes for specialist contractors whose diaries are already busy.
Knowing what your long-lead items are, and getting them moving immediately, is often the difference between a programme that lands and one that’s still unfinished when the pupils walk back in.
Don’t ignore the building you’re leaving empty
While the focus is on getting projects done, the holidays also change the risk profile of the building itself. Low occupancy brings its own issues, and they’re easy to overlook when attention is on the bigger jobs.
Water systems sitting stagnant raise legionella risk, so a flushing regime needs to be in place and recorded. Heating and ventilation set for full occupancy will run needlessly through August unless adjusted. And an empty site needs someone responsible for security and for responding if an alarm triggers. None of it is complicated, but it has to be deliberate.
Use the time to get ahead, not just keep up
If the essential work is under control, the summer is also a chance to make real progress rather than just clear a backlog.
That might be a decarbonisation project that moves you towards net zero. It might be upgrading building management systems so the estate runs more efficiently through the year. Or bringing a newly acquired school up to the standard of the rest. The summer is one of the few windows where this kind of work is genuinely achievable.
Make the next six weeks count
The schools that come back to a smooth September are the ones that used the summer deliberately: clear priorities, compliance locked in, long-lead items moving early, and the visibility to keep it all on track.
DMA Group works with Multi Academy Trusts and schools across the education sector, delivering planned maintenance and project works that keep estates safe, compliant and ready for the new term. If you’re working through your summer programme, we can help you make the most of the time you’ve got.
Gen in touch to talk through your estate.
