Maintenance report highlights work done in Chinook schools during pandemic
The disruption of school services earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic provided the Chinook School Division’s maintenance department with an opportunity to make significant progress with work requisitions and projects.
Manager of Facilities and Maintenance Kevin Jones presented the facilities status report at a regular Chinook School Division board meeting, Oct. 13.
His presentation highlighted the department’s activities during the past year and their efforts to prepare school facilities for the return of students and staff during the pandemic.
The closure of schools from March 20 until this fall was an unprecedented event, but with some advantages for maintenance and facilities teams.
“From that time, our maintenance and facility folks had an opportunity to get into the facilities, really unfettered access with no students and especially at the beginning not very much teaching staff around either,” he said after the meeting.
They were able to complete many work orders and to carry out deep cleaning projects. It was an opportunity to gain access to some areas that are usually in use during a regular school year. They had time to get into storage rooms and to clean out unused items.
“So that was a real opportunity that everyone took and put us into a better place from the work order perspective, and I know the caretaking staff felt really good that they could do that extra cleaning,” he said.
Maintenance staff were able to complete 83 per cent of the approved minor renovation projects during the past year. They also completed 1,763 work orders during the 2019-20 school year, which were less compared to the previous two years. A total of 2.054 work orders were completed in the 2018-19 school year and 2,066 in 2017-18.
“As soon as we broke with non-student contact days after March 20, the principals and day-to-day operational things that happened weren't breaking down,” he explained. “So we weren't getting so many work orders coming in. It was more of us going in and taking care of the existing work orders and keeping the plants operating.”
The facilities and maintenance budget for 2019-20 was $11.2 million. There was a surplus of $375,893 on Aug. 31, of which a significant portion was due to a savings on heating fuel, water and sewer, and electrical expenses during the year. Savings on these items due to the pandemic, when facilities were not used, were $48,761.
Maintenance and facilities staff helped to prepare school building for the return of students and staff in the fall under the school division’s pandemic re-open plan. These preparations included the installation of plexi-glass for office manager desks, floor decals, signage, hand sanitizer and hand wash stations, and creating isolation rooms. They also implemented cleaning and disinfection procedures.
In addition, the maintenance department took care of the procurement of personal protective equipment for use in school division facilities. The total cost of all the items that were purchased by Aug. 31 was $232,815.
“We knew that there was a whole lot of supplies that we needed to procure, everything from hand sanitizers to masks to respirators to gloves and eye protection,” he said. “There was a lot of people trying to procure this all at once. We were fortunate enough to make sure that we ordered early as we could on in the process. We were also fortunate that we received our final shipments on all the stuff to be in a place where we wanted to get ready for the staff and students to follow provincial and federal safety standards. We were there by about two weeks ahead of time.”
Additional cleaning standards
The implementation of these additional cleaning and disinfection procedures on a daily basis in school facilities require a concerted and coordinated effort by all staff.
“We've got two pieces to that,” he said. “One is the day-to-day cleaning and disinfecting that always happened in the past, but now we've got an increased disinfection to touch points all over the schools. That extra demand is being met in some cases by some additional staffing and really a concerted effort by all staff, not only facility staff, but a concerted effort by all staff in the schools to help with these touchpoint areas. It's definitely been a large increase in the disinfecting aspect of the schools, for sure.”
The Chinook School Division is implementing precautionary pandemic measures to control airborne particulates. This is done through three main initiatives. One is through the increase of mechanical ventilation in buildings to allow more fresh air exchange per hour.
“We can only do so much of that in the winter time, but we do realize we're probably going to take on a little bit of higher heating cost, because we do want to bring in some more fresh air,” he said.
The second approach is to use bi-polar ionization units, which are installed on mechanical ventilation equipment. This will disrupt the surface proteins of pathogens and make them inactive. The ions cause the particulates to stick together and they are then collected in air filters.
The school division purchased a number of portable Jade air units as a third measure of control. Each unit contains a hepa filter, carbon filter and ultraviolet light. The filters will capture over 99 per cent of viruses as small as one micron, which is the size of the corona virus. Any remaining viruses will be destroyed by the ultraviolet light.
“With those technologies we feel we can get those into the majority of the classrooms and keep everybody as safe as we can,” he said. “And then obviously within the schools they'll continue to wear masks where they need to and social distance and follow all of their hand sanitizing and those protocols as well.”
The facilities status report also provides details about the maintenance of the 29 buildings in the school division during the 2019-20 school year. School facilities are rated according to a variety of criteria, varying from electrical and plumbing to roofing, structural criteria, exterior condition, health and safety, and yard site development.
The goal is that each facility should achieve an acceptable rating of 80 per cent or higher. This goal is reached through ongoing maintenance efforts in combination with funding for capital projects and funding from the Ministry of Education’s Preventative Maintenance and Repair (PMR) program.
Twenty-seven out of 29 schools (93 per cent) had in increase in overall rating during the past 13 years. The overall rating of 23 schools (79 per cent) increased with more than five per cent since 2005. The average increase in the overall condition of all school facilities was 10.22 per cent over the past 14 years.
“I'm really happy with the way that school condition index has gone,” Jones said. “Back in 2005 we did a baseline of all Chinook schools from an architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, accessibility, yard site, roof perspective, and so we've got a comprehensive template that we use. When it's a major capital project or some PMR funding or even through our D1 minor renovation budget and operational budgets we try to improve the schools every year.”
He added that most of the schools in the Chinook School Division were build in the 1960s, and they are trying to maintain them as best as they can.
“I would say with our older buildings, if the PRM funding and the major capital project funding stays healthy, we will be able to,” he said. “I would say in the last three years for sure we've been happy with where our funding has been at. I mean, it can always be more, don't get me wrong. … We've got a $7.5 million plan, a three-year plan, but if we went into a four or a five-year projection that number is only going to grow. So we could always us more money, but we're definitely able to maintain what we have with the current funding.”