Back in January, we wrote about how working with a special school helped us develop a new type of school caretaking and site management service; you can read that HERE.
Dee Banks School is an all-age special school based in Chester and has been with us since 2019. We started off providing School Caretaking; then we added School Cleaning. Over the last year or so, we have piloted a complete School Site Management Service with them and are now rolling this out to our other Schools.
Kate Hubbard, School Business Manager, Dee Banks School
We thought we’d have a quick catch up with Kate Hubbard, the School Business Manager at Dee Banks, and get an update on how things are going, so we had a quick chat over Zoom the other day.
Nirvana: Kate, when did you start using us for School Cleaning and Caretaking?
Kate: ‘’We started using you in 2019 when you appointed Mark as our Caretaker, who is a key member of the team and thankfully is still with us! More recently, you have added Luigi as our Site Manager, who is fabulous and has taken things to the next level!’’
Nirvana: What kind of site arrangements did you have before you appointed us?
Kate: ‘’We had a mix of direct and contract staff for cleaning and caretaking but no site management function as such. As School Business Manager, I had to cover that additional work myself. This was an issue as it made it harder for me to minimise the teaching staff’s business workload, and that impacted teaching time and our students.’’
Nirvana: What do you like the most about our School Site Management Service?
Kate: ‘’So many things !! The excellent value for money, but just as importantly, I love the personal touch of the rapport we have with the Nirvana team on site. I love the excellent service; I know I can pick up the phone with your MD Lloyd and ask him anything. I’ll get an honest answer, and he will deliver what he promises!
I have just been blown away by the service and the safety, security and cleanliness of the school since you started.’’
Nirvana: When the pandemic struck, was there anything in particular that we helped with?
Kate: ‘’ When the pandemic first struck, you were one of the first to get a ‘Fogging Machine’ so you could do a full anti covid clean. That’s been essential in keeping our student’s staff and parents safe. As we are a special school, we perhaps have more pupil hygiene challenges than most, so your services give all of us real peace of mind when the school is so spotless and smells so clean. ‘’
Nirvana: Would you recommend us to other Schools looking for School Site Management Services?
Kate: ‘Very much so we enjoy working with Lloyd and the team they are so good at what they do, honest, trustworthy and nice to deal with.’’
Nirvana: Thanks for taking time out from a hectic and sometimes unpredictable schedule to speak to us today, Kate!
Kate: ‘You are very welcome. It was a pleasure to speak to you.’’
If you want to have a more in-depth conversation about our School Site Management Service, please get in touch with us HERE
Dee Banks School Chester (pic credit Maple Leaf Designs)
Our School Site Management Service – the Nirvana way
At Nirvana, our School Caretaking and Site Management Service offers Schools all the benefits of an outsourced caretaking service with non of the downsides.
Our service provides full cover even when your Caretaker goes off sick. We provide schools on a retainer basis with the standards set out in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). As each SLA is bespoke, we agree on it with the school and include agreed standards and targets at the contract’s commencement.
We are not an agency, we value our staff and their development, and we know how vital retaining our staff as long term team members are. We don’t like zero-hours contracts, so all staff are directly employed and contracted for a set number of hours, we pay more than the minimum wage, providing pensions and paid holiday.
We keep down admin costs by sending all our invoices digitally. All our quality checks and report documents are available in a customer portal accessed via a secure login.
Our Caretakers come with all the relevant qualifications and are DBS and reference checked. We provide a comprehensive training package before they start on site.
Our training package is provided online and includes the following:
Manual Handling
Health and Safety Awareness
COSHH
Asbestos Awareness
Safeguarding Children Level 1
Fire awareness / Marshall
Legionella and Legionnaires Disease Awareness
Working at height
Long Term Partnership, Quality, Peace of Mind and Cost reduction- the Nirvana way
Long term partnerships are essential to us, and that’s how we have built the business in the last ten years.
We work hard on developing our people on-site to retain them and improve their skills. We find that’s the best way to provide outstanding service and reduce the number of contractors needed to provide the service to a high standard. That means we can pass on a share of the cost savings too.
Above all, we aim to give our Schools peace of mind that a reliable, robust management system keeps them safe and secure and saves the hassle, time, and money.
If you want to have a more in-depth conversation about our School Caretaking Service, please contact us HERE.
Benefits -the Nirvana way
Our School Site Management Service :
- Saves time and money for schools on the recruitment and management of staff
- Provides cover for all soft services
- It is fully managed by one of our very experienced facilities managers
- Has remote monitoring through our management systems with a customer login to keep track of all day to day activity and access management performance management information.
- Provides continuos 24/7 cover
- Deliver our service to an agreed SLA and KPI’s making sure we each on-site team members meet your needs all the time.
- Saves between 30% to 40% of employment costs. We pay pension costs, PAYE and Holiday Pay.
We aim to give our Schools peace of mind and deliver a reliable, robust management system that keeps them safe and secure and saves the hassle, time and money.
So how much does this all cost?
Our prices vary, but our packages start from £250.00 + VAT per week and go up to £800.00 + VAT per week; the pricing is specific to each school and its needs. Pension costs are additional.
We love to hear from you.
We value our Schools, and in these challenging times, it has been an absolute pleasure helping keep student parents and staff safe. We’re looking forward to getting to know many more.
If you want to have a more in-depth conversation about our School Caretaking Service, please contact us HERE.
