Can FM Procurement Help Schools Save Money Long-Term?

According to Sprint Education’s latest budget insights, only 47% of schools are actively responding to financial pressure by seeking better value suppliers.

At a time when school budgets remain under pressure and the government is placing increasing focus on value for money, estate efficiency and long term sustainability, that figure feels surprisingly low.

If schools are facing greater financial pressure while expectations around estate performance continue to rise, why are more than half of schools still not actively seeking better value suppliers?

Procurement reviews often sit behind safeguarding, attendance, staffing pressures, inspections, wellbeing initiatives and the countless operational demands competing for attention every day. Facilities management contracts rarely feel like the most urgent issue until something goes wrong, which means they can gradually slip down the priority list despite representing a significant area of spend. By the time they receive attention, schools are often working against renewal dates, operational issues or rising costs rather than taking a proactive and strategic approach.

That is understandable, school leaders and operational teams are balancing responsibilities that extend far beyond estates and procurement activity. However, leaving facilities management in the “we’ll get to it later” category can quietly become expensive over time.

The wider environment is also changing. Government focus on school estates, sustainability targets and long term asset planning continues to increase. Schools are under growing pressure to demonstrate value for money, improve efficiency and ensure buildings remain fit for purpose, while the maintenance backlog across education buildings remains substantial. Expectations are shifting beyond simply maintaining buildings and towards managing estates more strategically.

How Facilities Management Costs Quietly Increase Over Time

For many schools, rising costs do not come from one obvious area of overspend. Service arrangements evolve over time and, as schools change, contracts do not always change with them.

A cleaning specification may still reflect building usage patterns from several years ago. Energy contracts can continue without being reviewed against changing usage patterns or market conditions, while service arrangements often remain structured around historic requirements rather than current priorities. Inflationary uplifts may also be applied year after year without being reviewed or benchmarked against the wider market.

Viewed independently, none of these examples necessarily stand out as a major concern. Across an entire estate, however, they rarely happen in isolation. Small inefficiencies spread across multiple contracts can gradually build into significant long term cost leakage, particularly when reviews become difficult to prioritise alongside everything else schools are managing.

Why Facilities Management Needs a Joined Up Procurement Strategy

Many schools review services individually. Cleaning, energy, maintenance and wider operational contracts are often managed through different budgets, suppliers and review cycles.

Different suppliers frequently work to separate objectives, report in different formats and operate on different timelines. Over time, that can reduce visibility across the estate and make it harder to identify overlapping costs, inefficiencies and opportunities to improve value.

The focus therefore moves beyond reviewing contract prices in isolation and towards understanding wider estate spend, operational efficiency and where savings opportunities may be hiding. A more joined up facilities management procurement strategy creates greater visibility and allows schools to understand how services work together rather than assessing them separately.

Where Schools Often Uncover Hidden Savings Opportunities

Savings opportunities within facilities management are not always found through large scale changes or disruptive projects. More often, they emerge through services and contracts that have gradually evolved over time without being reassessed against current operational needs.

Cleaning contracts can continue operating around outdated specifications or building usage patterns that no longer reflect how spaces are used today. Energy arrangements can become disconnected from changing consumption patterns, supplier markets and newer efficiency opportunities. Service structures that once represented good value can slowly become less aligned with operational requirements and financial priorities.

For most schools, this rarely comes down to poor decision making. Time and resource pressures mean reviews often happen reactively rather than strategically, particularly when existing arrangements appear to be working well enough.

When schools do take the opportunity to review these areas, they often uncover differences in pricing structures, service specifications and contract performance that had simply gone unnoticed over time. Even relatively small changes can create meaningful long term savings without disrupting day to day operations or adding pressure to already stretched teams.

Turning FM Procurement into Long Term Value

Facilities management is becoming increasingly important strategically, but schools should not need to absorb another complex responsibility internally.

Creating visibility over spend, contract performance and procurement opportunities takes time, and that is often the very thing schools have the least of. Bringing in specialist support allows schools to uncover opportunities that may otherwise remain hidden without pulling focus away from the priorities that already demand attention.

Schools often approach Procure looking for support with a contract review or tender process and uncover opportunities that had gone unnoticed, including duplicated services, hidden costs and areas of unnecessary spend.

On average, Procure helps schools reduce procurement costs by 25% while saving around 20% of staff time. Long term savings often come from having the time, structure and visibility to see the bigger picture.