19 A major feature of PFI is the undertaking by the PFI provider to keep the school buildings in a good state of repair over many years. PFI should concentrate minds onto a whole-life (or 'lifecycle') approach to building maintenance in a way that traditional procurement processes may not do. Those bidding for PFI schemes have an incentive to consider whole-life costs, and to try to minimise them wherever possible so that their bids are competitive and year-on-year maintenance costs are not higher than expected.
20 Yet the technical assessment found not only that few schools came out well in terms of the buildings' cost of ownership,I but that the PFI sample scored, statistically speaking, significantly worse than the traditionally funded sample. There is little evidence so far that more investment had been made upfront to reduce longer-term maintenance costs in the majority of the PFI schools reviewed than is usually the case in traditionally funded schools.II BRE commented on the maintenance consequences for PFI schemes arising from the workmanship and materials used in initial construction:
Recent industry standards suggest that about 1.5 to 4 per cent of the capital cost of a school should be spent on annual maintenance costs, averaged over the first two decades of the buildings' life.I This includes decoration; fabric and services maintenance; cleaning; utilities; and administrative costs. BRE's review suggests that many of the schools would need maintenance budgets towards the top of the recommended range, and this may have implications for the residual value of the building at the end of the concession period.
21 BRE has confirmed that whole-life considerations were evident in the design of some of the traditionally funded schools in our sample. Indeed, our fieldwork suggested that local authority architects and surveyors were only too aware that schools may not be properly maintained in the future because of lack of funding, and therefore said that they looked to pre-empt problems through appropriate design and use of materials where funding permitted. However, ear-marked provision for future maintenance over 30 years is one of the main anticipated benefits of PFI over traditional procurement - this issue is returned to later in the chapter.
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I The average scores for the six elements that make up this matrix varied from 2.0 to 2.8, where 4.0 means best practice standards.
II This could also be a consequence of affordability and the PFI evaluation process. These issues are considered further in Chapter 4.
I 'Various BMI (Building Maintenance Information) and SCALA (Society of Chief Architects of Local Authorities) sources. This range represents estimated typical LA approved expenditure to recommended expenditure. It varies according to the type of school, i.e. nursery; primary; secondary; special school, and may well be considerably above this range in the advent of major defects.'