Board Room to Boiler Room

I was Head of a school with a unique campus about which the school community had intensely strong convictions. It was very expensive to maintain because of the neighborhood in which it resided and because of the architectural significance of the buildings, 6 mansions built in the 1920s and 30s renovated for school use. And, it was on a very small footprint--the 500 people in our school community, with occasional guests, shared 3 acres--in a dense, complicated neighborhood where many of the city's cultural resources were within walking distance, and which was dominated by our across-the-street neighbor, Washington University.

I quickly became a zealous promoter of the campus and our neighborhood as something that set us apart from our competitors, most of them ensconced in bigger but blander buildings in spacious but bland suburbs who had to make elaborate plans to visit the places we could go whenever we chose and on foot. I also had to become much more knowledgable about facilities than the average head of school (if such a person exists) because of the aforementioned facility weirdness and the outsized preventative maintenance line in the school's budget. And that, dear reader, is how I became a facilities weirdo.

The continuum from the boiler room to the board room--from replacing 80 year old pipe fittings to assembling and presenting 5 year forecasts to the Board's Building and Grounds Committee--is a fair description of the scope of the Director of Facilities' job at any independent school, and school leaders, as a group, are taking the role more seriously. It's taken a while, though. The consultancy ISM has encouraged schools to professionalize their facilities oversight for four decades now, first by jolting school leaders with the PPRRSM equation. It remains a breathtaking number--a cash reserve in the amount of 3% of the total replacement cost of your facility--even more breathtaking when you understand that the object is to spend it regularly on preventative repair and replacement not to hoard it as a nest egg against the moment when your school's deferred maintenance calls the bluff.

Because facilities work may be the last significant office of school operations to mature, finding facility leaders who can lead this change makes searches even harder. As a consultant, I encounter schools who manage their facility budget by spitballing a percentage increase each year because there is no on-going, objective assessment of the campus. At these schools, the Director of Facilities is typically a very competent handy-person who has created a team that is adept at reaction but has outsourced the little proactive efforts that exist to vendors. Thus, at schools that have just recognized the need to mature their facilities operations, new Directors of Facilities often have a heavily lift ahead, to create more reliable structures, grow the overall skillset of the team, collect and analyze more data, build their place at the senior leadership table, all while doing the daily work of making the campus safe and high functioning.

A few very large, well-funded schools have facilities teams that look like higher ed, with a "suit" at the top of the org chart, a person whose role is entirely focused on strategy, who, in turn, oversees a technical leader, who oversees a facilities team which also has a few layers of leadership. Most schools, however, are seeking that rare leader who has worn a tool belt and risen into management and, ideally, director-level experience, a person who knows the importance of data, its analysis and presentation, has been part of a senior leadership team that makes executive level decisions. Add into this Venn diagram, a person who enjoys the joyful chaos of school life, and you have a pretty skinny Venn intersection.

We look for people who've been school DFs, of course, but also people from parallel industries. Construction project managers, particularly those who've worked on public school building projects, are great candidates. They understand the trades and the value of attention to detail, and they've also been intensely accountable to their clients, from building and district leaders to elected boards. They've presented at televised school board meetings with unhappy citizens waiting at the mics in the aisles to express dismay at the cost overruns. Facility leaders at museums also have a strong analogous skill set, overseeing buildings with intense public use, high tech HVAC programs for artifact storage, and an ever evolving use of space that demands creativity and precision. These people are also accustomed to wielding influence within the structure of authority in nonprofit institutions. Facility leaders at multi-use sports venues can also be good candidates as they oversee the work of multiple trades and are responsible for transforming venues from, say, an NHL game to a concert overnight. Sports venue candidates need significant guidance in adapting to the very different structure of authority in an independent school and building executive leadership skills as they are likely in the middle of a pretty vast org chart. Museum and sports venue candidates also have deep experience collaborating with security leaders. We've found some great internal candidates, typically "first mates" inside of large facility teams, people who are proactive, who have a very high sense of ownership, who are excellent noticers, and who are well-liked because they make an effort to steward relationships. The internal candidate likely hasn't been responsible for assembling and analyzing data, or collaborating with senior leaders and needs active support for building these executive leadership skills. I've also found some unicorns, including an architect who built a side-hustle as a general contractor for interesting urban, re-use projects and saw the Director of Facilities job at an urban PreK - 12 as an opportunity to combine his interests. The Board room end of the continuum is where schools will derive the greatest value in the role and where most Directors of Facilities need support. MISBO has excellent facility leadership programs.