10 Year Property Plan steps for schools

Find the 5 steps required in the preparation of your 10 Year Property Plan.

Level of compliance Main audience Other

Required

  • Boards
  • Principals and tumuaki

 

Schools are required to prepare a 10 Year Property Plan (10YPP) every 5 years. Boards are required to participate at every step with the 10YPP consultant in the preparation of the plan. This guidance supports you to understand your role and the requirements your plan must meet in order to be approved by the Ministry.

Overview

The 10YPP is prepared in 5 steps, each of which is detailed in this guidance. You will also find other helpful resources to support the creation of your plan.

Before beginning work, your 10YPP consultant will contact you directly to introduce themselves and schedule a visit. Your consultant may also use this opportunity to complete the desktop condition assessment and detailed physical condition assessment of your school buildings.

These steps have been prepared for schools. If you are a 10YPP consultant, please see our information for consultants page.

10YPP: Information for consultants

Step 1: 10YPP start-up and desktop condition assessment

Start up

  • The 10YPP consultant will schedule a meeting.
  • Participants may include your consultant, principal, board members and staff with property knowledge.
  • The purpose of this meeting is to introduce all parties and establish a good relationship, to set expectations and to understand roles and responsibilities.
  • Your 10YPP consultant may also take this opportunity to complete the desktop Condition Assessment and detailed physical assessment.

Consultant access to schools

Prior to this meeting you should review the extent of access needed by the consultant and their staff by completing a school access plan.

Every contractor or consultant who is likely to have unsupervised access to students at a school during normal school hours must be police vetted. The board is responsible for determining the conditions of access for contractors. 

Desktop condition assessment

A condition assessment is a systematic review of all building, plant, facilities and underground services. The findings are used to identify what maintenance works are required over the next 10 years.

The condition assessment has 2 parts:

  • a desktop assessment
  • detailed physical assessment. 

The condition assessment begins with the 10YPP consultant conducting a desktop assessment of your school property. This includes gathering the knowledge of those people who understand your school property well, such as the principal, caretaker and other property personnel.

Identify strategic impacts

The consultant will discuss any 'strategic impacts' at your school.

Strategic impacts are factors or planned actions that will affect the use or condition of a building or service now or in the future. For example, if you identify that a building is due to be replaced, it may need essential work to keep it operational in the meantime but will not need painting or new floor coverings.

Other strategic impacts' to consider are:

  • predicted changes in enrolments
  • the impact of new technology
  • the effect of Ministry programmes like earthquake strengthening or weathertightness repair
  • specialist reports – for example structural reports that will impact the condition assessment.

The 10YPP consultant will guide you through this discussion.

Agree maintenance standards

Agree the required maintenance standard for each building and service with the consultant. The standards define a desired condition of buildings and services in a school and establish quality levels.

School evaluation of the physical environment (SEPE)

You are responsible for completing the school evaluation of the physical environment (SEPE).

This is a questionnaire about how well the whole school site supports teaching and learning, including the diverse needs and wellbeing of all. It will help to establish priorities for any property upgrades.

School evaluation of physical environment (SEPE)

Maintenance standards 

Each building or service will have 1 of the following maintenance standards.

A: Specialist spaces are spaces that need a higher level of maintenance than other areas (for example, science laboratories).

B: General spaces are general classrooms and administrative facilities.

C: Minimal is the standard for buildings and services that have a limited life, fulfil a non-core function or have a basic utility function only (for example, ancillary buildings such as a caretaker or storage shed).

D: Mothball is the standard for buildings and services that are closed and not in current use.

Step 2: detailed physical assessment and specialist reports

After your 10YPP consultant has finished the desktop assessment, the detailed physical assessment is done to assess the condition of the building fabric (roofs, walls, floors) and the internal fabric (ceiling and wall linings, trim, paintwork, carpets, windows).

High-level specialist reports

At this stage, the 10YPP consultant engages specialists to do high-level reports on 5 key infrastructure features:

  • electrical
  • roofing
  • plumbing
  • drainage
  • boiler and heating.

If a report is outside of the scope of the 10YPP the cost will be a school operational cost, recoverable from any resulting projects.

10-year forecast

The 10YPP consultant uses the information from the specialist reports and the physical assessment to create an initial 10-year forecast of the costs of maintaining the school’s buildings and facilities.

Step 3: 10YPP planning meeting

After the consultant completes the condition assessment, they will gather any remaining information needed to begin developing the 10YPP.

They will arrange a planning meeting to confirm that the 10YPP is fit for purpose, meets your requirements and Ministry policy.

What you need to provide the consultant

The consultant will already have access via the Helios Portal to the school evaluation of physical environment (SEPE) assessment you completed for your school identifying your school vision. 

You should provide the following to the 10YPP consultant prior to the 10YPP planning meeting:

  • roll projections, showing whether your school roll is growing, steady or falling. Your property advisor may be able to provide a demographic report if your school roll is growing
  • your cyclical maintenance plan and a copy of any maintenance contracts you have (for example, programme maintenance plan for painting, boiler maintenance contract) 
  • building warrant of fitness (BWOF) information, including any outstanding work requirement notices
  • anything else that may affect the 10YPP like an energy management review, special character features, special education needs, cultural impacts, your school security policy and/or your traffic management plan.

10YPP planning meeting

Your school principal, a board representative, the 10YPP consultant and your Ministry property advisor must be at the planning meeting. Your caretaker and other school property representatives can also attend. The 10YPP consultant will arrange a 10YPP planning meeting and send you an agenda. 

At the 10YPP planning meeting you:

  • discuss your vision for the development of the school through the 10YPP, based on SEPE results, school charter, results of the condition assessment and all other other inputs into the 10YPP
  • prioritise projects within available budgets, as outlined in your 5 Year Agreement (5YA) letter.

The 10YPP consultant will take minutes of the meeting and circulate them to everyone who attended. Make sure you agree with the recorded version of events as they will form the basis of the 10YPP.

Consider spending priorities for the 10YPP

At the meeting you will re-consider the priority of work identified in the condition assessment with the list of other work you want to do. The focus must be on maintaining and upgrading essential services and existing property.

The priorities are:

  • Priority 1: Health and safety.
  • Priority 2: Essential infrastructure.
  • Priority 3: Fit for purpose learning environments.
  • Priority 4: Discretionary projects.

Discuss the budget

The amount of funding available to your school will have a major impact on the priority and scope of projects in your 10YPP, including the standard of the accommodation.

When budgeting, you must understand the difference between capital and maintenance costs.

Maintenance funding

Property maintenance grant funding

Capital funding

5 Year Agreement (5YA) funding

Sources of funding

This section lists all possible funding sources and how you can use each one.

5YA funding is based on $ per square metre entitlement

Do all urgent health and safety work and essential infrastructure work first, then modernisation work.

Board's discretionary funding sources

Eg surplus operational funding, fundraising and community grants.

Surplus operational funding is only surplus if you can show you have met all your obligations for running the school and maintaining the school property. You need the Ministry’s financial advisor's recommendation and our consent to use it.

Have you included all discretionary funding sources and how you intend using them? Only include funding that is immediately available. Do not include projected funding.

If more funds become available, you can include them when 10YPP is reviewed.

Specific capital funding programmes

Coordinate the projects with the budgeting and timing of other projects in the 10YPP.

In addition, the Ministry's own budgeting constraints may affect when capital funding will be available to your school.

Other potential costs to consider

This section shows other costs that you may need to include in any project budget.

Specified systems such as lifts, fire and air conditioning systems and Ministry design standards

These are a cost to the project (for example new teaching block) and must be factored into the project budget.

Access standards for students with special education needs

Every project proposed under the 5YA must include the cost of upgrades to provide suitable access (e.g. putting in a lift).

There is no additional modernisation funding stream for Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) students/staff. It is factored into your total property funding.

Property costs of hosting special school satellite units at the school

Satellite units on host school sites

Plan for cyclical maintenance

Cyclical maintenance refers specifically to painting the outside of school buildings that you do on a cycle or regularly, usually done every 7 to 10 years.

You 10YPP consultant will work with you to update your existing cyclical maintenance schedule every 5 years. It is then up to you to keep it up to date annually, plan for maintenance work required and set aside operational funding to address cyclical maintenance.

The cyclical maintenance calculation template and worked examples help calculate how much funding to set aside each year.

Tools to support calculation of cyclical maintenance provision

Step 4: completion of the 10YPP

After the 10YPP planning meeting, the 10YPP consultant will use the information discussed and any other relevant information to complete the 10YPP. They may need to meet with you again to discuss details needed to complete the plan.

When the plan is in its final draft form you will need to read, review and discuss the plan with the consultant.

Check that the plan:

  • reflects your values and goals
  • is within budget
  • meets all your requirements.

You will need to discuss any changes you would like with your 10YPP consultant.

The consultant will coordinate a review of the draft plan with the Ministry and then finalise the plan.

Step 5: approval of the 10YPP

The final step in the 10YPP process is approval of the plan, where the 10YPP consultant will seek board agreement and Ministry approval and you, the board, will sign your 5 Year Agreement (5YA). 

1. Board approval

After your 10YPP consultant makes any changes needed to the draft plan, they will submit the final 10YPP to the full board for agreement. Once you are satisfied with the 10YPP, minute this at your board meeting.

The 10YPP consultant will then submit the 10YPP to the Ministry for approval.

Deadline

In order to have the 10YPP approved on time, it must be submitted to the Ministry by mid-April at the latest, with specialist reports completed 3-6 months prior to initial submission to the Ministry.

2. Ministry approval

The Ministry will check that the 10YPP meets the policy and funding criteria. If something does not meet these criteria, your property advisor will discuss any changes needed with you and your 10YPP consultant.

  • If major changes are required, the 10YPP may need to go back for full board agreement.
  • If no major changes are required, your 10YPP should be approved within 20 working days.

Deadline

The 10YPP must be approved by the Ministry before 30 June in the year your 5YA begins. This is to allow you to have access to your 5YA funds on 1 July, when your 10YPP comes into effect.

3. Sign the 5YA

Once the Ministry has approved the 10YPP, we will send you a letter giving our approval and include 2 copies of your 5YA for signing.

When you receive your 5YA, sign both copies and return them to the Ministry for us to sign.

The Ministry will send back one fully signed copy for your records.

4. Begin projects in the 10YPP

Once everyone has signed the 5YA, you can begin the projects planned in the 10YPP. All projects must meet Ministry project management requirements.

Your 10YPP consultant can tender for your 5YA projects, but must go through a separate engagement process and have a separate contract to do so.

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