May 29, 2002—Three UK education organizations have joined forces to set up a database of property information for further education colleges, to help cut their maintenance costs.
The Further Education Estates Management Statistics (FEEMS) project, which brings together the Learning and Skills Council, Education Learning Wales and the Scottish Further Education Funding Council, will enable colleges to compare estate management running costs, such as cleaning and heating expenditure. This data will then help colleges reduce these costs over time and help them manage their estates more effectively. At present, the UK further education sector comprises over 500 colleges with total property ownership in excess of 10m sq m of floor space.
FEEMS will be based on a similar model already operating in the higher education sector and consultants will be commissioned to develop the data definitions and roll out data collection to the whole of the UK further education sector.
Commenting, chief executive of the Scottish Further Education Funding Council Roger McClure, said: “College estates are complex, costly and difficult to manage. The need to provide full disabled access by 2005 is a further major challenge. The FEEMS data will provide an invaluable opportunity for colleges to pool their expertise and share best practice.”
Colleges can volunteer to participate and in return for their involvement they will receive comparative data from groups of similar colleges and from the sector as a whole. The project, which will be developed over three years due to the size of the sector, follows a pilot scheme involving 32 colleges.
The pilot scheme was undertaken by IPD Occupiers Property Data Bank in association with Drivers Jonas and identified a need for a set of usable and widespread estate management ratios.
Detailed work on the project will begin in the summer and the first report is likely to be published early next year.
—Jessica Jarlvi
Reprinted with permission; copyright 2002 i-FM
