IncidentIQ conducted a market survey to gain insights into the latest trends in K-12 facilities management. We asked K-12 Facilities Managers about the challenges they expected to face for the upcoming school year, how well their administrators understood their day-to-day work, and what goals they’re setting for their department. This work resulted in the 2024-2025 K-12 Facilities Survey Whitepaper, and this post provides a summary of the key highlights.
Top Concerns: Budget Constraints and Aging Infrastructure
Unsurprisingly, budget constraints and aging infrastructure topped the list of concerns. .With the average age of school buildings in the U.S. hovering around 50 years, many facilities are overdue for major repairs and renovations. The 2021 State of Schools report highlighted a staggering $85 billion funding gap needed to properly maintain school buildings and equipment. Without comprehensive, long-term planning and the necessary budget to invest in these efforts, the challenges of aging infrastructure will persist.
Delays, Staffing Shortages, and Rising Maintenance Costs
Another major challenge facilities managers anticipate for the upcoming school year are delays in maintenance and repairs. When fixes get delayed over and over again, the problem gets worse – and more costly. Safety issues can also get worse the longer they are put off. Staffing shortages were another challenge reported: technicians are retiring faster than they’re being replaced by new talent, and it hampers schools’ ability to offer safe, reliable facilities for students and teachers
Top Goals for the School Year: Efficiency and Cost Reduction
When asked about the top goals for the upcoming school year, respondents ranked improving efficiency as number one and decreasing maintenance costs as number two. Getting more done with less has long been a topic of discussion in the facilities management world, and it seems that it’s not going away anytime soon. Realistically, facilities managers might be able to do the same with less, but more often, they end up doing less with less—which means deferring maintenance. Respondents answered that they mostly expected their budget to increase some or stay the same for the upcoming school year. Almost none expect their budget to increase or decrease significantly. The issue with stagnant budgets is that inflation could limit how far budget dollars can stretch. circling back to one of the biggest challenges: delays in maintenance and repairs.
Leadership Support and Communication Gaps
The survey also delved into the level of support from and communication with school leadership. Respondents were asked how well they felt school and district leadership understood their work and challenges. The majority answered “somewhat” and the rest mostly answered “a little” or “not at all”. This ties into the next question: How effective are your systems and processes in providing stakeholders with a comprehensive understanding of the work your team is doing? The most common response was “somewhat effective” with many others indicating that their systems were neutral or ineffective in helping others grasp the full scope of their department’s work.
There is clearly room for improvement when it comes to illustrating department workload and increasing transparency. These results illustrate a common issue with facilities teams: it’s hard to secure funds and resources needed to support department workload because it’s not well understood what it takes to maintain school buildings. School leaders are not experts in maintenance and operations the way facilities managers are, they depend on those who are the experts on building management to help them understand what it entails (that’s you, facilities managers!).
Key Metrics to Track: Budget, Workload, and Energy Efficiency
When asked what key metrics or data facilities managers felt were most important to track, maintenance costs to the operating budget was the top answer, which is a foundational piece of information for facilities managers to understand about their operations. Tight budgets are a top concern and so it follows that documenting how they’re tracking the allocated budget is critical. The number of maintenance requests was next, which offers a great snapshot of department workload. The third key metric to track in order of importance was energy consumption. Facilities managers can have a direct impact on energy efficiency and utility consumption, which can dramatically improve school budgets.
Addressing Top Challenges: Budget, Deferred Maintenance, and Safety
There was one open-ended question which simply asked “what keeps you up at night”. The answers echoed much of what has already been discussed: budget, deferred maintenance, aging buildings, and safety. It’s no surprise that respondents are concerned about these common issues. The role of facilities manager has continued to expand over the years with more responsibility falling on them for areas like health, safety, IT security, talent management, technology integration, and sustainability. That additional responsibility often comes without additional budget, staff, or resources, which means tradeoffs must be made. In these times of increasing service expectations, it’s hard to decide how to prioritize how to allocate resources.
Leveraging Technology: The Power of a CMMS
Technology can be a huge benefit in helping with many of these reported issues—from speeding up communication between team members and requestors to informing decision-makers of the department’s workload and justifying resource needs. Yet, only 39% of responders reported utilizing a CMMS today. By showing that needed work hours outweigh available man hours, a CMMS helps create a compelling argument for more headcount. Increased transparency via digital work order tracking helps reduce back-and-forth questions and helps administrators understand team workload. There’s also the benefit of ensuring work is prioritized consistently, performed accurately, and the end results are of high-quality for good customer service. A CMMS is the key to creating a culture of sharing achievements and successes so that leaders understand what it takes to maintain school buildings and equipment. This moves the perception of the facilities department from cost center to asset and helps ensure you secure budget and resources needed.
Dive Deeper with the Full Report
There is so much more to divulge from our survey, which is why we created the 2024-25 K-12 Facilities Survey Whitepaper. This document dives deeper into the underlying causes behind these reported issues, integrates outside research relating to these challenges, and provides greater insight into actionable solutions. Whether you’re just looking for a “state of the industry” report or a way to help understand your own department, this is a free resource you won’t want to overlook. Get the full report today.
