CARY, N.C. (Sept. 12, 2017) – Dude Solutions, the leading provider of cloud-based operations management solutions, today unveiled its inaugural Education Operations Health Index, a bi-annual collection of unique data and survey results reporting on the state of school facilities and operations nationwide.
The Education Operations Health Index combines two decades of SchoolDude operations data and a 23-question survey addressing preventive and deferred maintenance, technology, energy, community use and safety. More than 200 education operations professionals at K-12 and private schools, four-year universities and two-year colleges answered the 2017 survey.
Dude Solutions evaluates and scores the responses with a positive or negative sentiment and calculates an overall composite Education Operations Health Index score on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being the most optimistic outlook and indicator of success. The Fall 2017 Operations Index composite index score is 55.6 indicating much room for improvement in education facilities.
“With the Education Operations Health Index, every education leader, from superintendents to business officers to CIOs, now has a benchmark to pinpoint their department’s strengths and weaknesses in order to make more informed and actionable decisions,” said Nick Mirisis, vice president of marketing for Dude Solutions. “It’s an honor to provide this unique data-based view, as it is what helps inspire the necessary changes to keep our schools healthy and our students safe.”
Highlights of the Fall 2017 Education Operations Health Index include:
Preventive Maintenance:
While preventive maintenance (PM) is more valuable than ever for schools dealing with aging infrastructures, the year-to-year ratio of PM to non-PM work orders has slightly increased (from 17 percent in 2016 to 19 percent in 2017). This is still well below the recommended 30 percent benchmark.
Community Use of Facilities
As the utilization of school facilities for community events increases, SchoolDude estimates that on average schools incur costs of $70 per student per event for energy usage, personnel charges, materials used and general wear and tear. Schools are only recovering an estimated 40 percent of community use costs, demonstrating an opportunity to include cost recovery efforts and slow deterioration.
Energy Conservation
Energy remains the second largest expenditure for school facilities budgets, yet the majority of SchoolDude’s survey respondents (83 percent) have not seen an increase in their energy spend from last year.
Technology Management
Schools are increasingly looking for ways to leverage technology assets and 58 percent of respondents say they have more assets to deploy this year compared to last year. Nearly 90 percent of respondents expect their instructional materials to be at least 50 percent digital within the next three years.
For complete findings of the 2017 Operations Health Index, please join us for a SchoolDude webinar on September 14, at 2pm ET. To register, visit here.
ABOUT THE EDUCATION OPERATIONS HEALTH INDEX
SchoolDude’s bi-annual Education Operations Health Index utilizes nearly two decades of education operations statistics from SchoolDude client data as they complete and track daily work. Aggregate data includes work orders, IT tickets, event management, energy usage and more, collected from progressive and innovative operations, facilities and IT managers. Data analysis was combined with online survey results from 200 respondents in education operations from a variety of regions, job titles and school sizes, including public K-12 schools, four-year universities, two-year colleges, and private and independent schools.
ABOUT DUDE SOLUTIONS (PARENT COMPANY OF SCHOOLDUDE)
Dude Solutions, parent company of SchoolDude, FacilityDude and TheWorxHub, is a leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of operations management solutions to education, government, healthcare, manufacturing and membership-based organizations. The company combines innovative technology with operational insight to transform the places people learn, live, heal, work, and play. Today, more than 9,000 organizations are using Dude Solutions’ award-winning software for facilities, energy, safety, IT and a growing suite of related enterprise applications to increase efficiencies, improve service and save money. For more information, please visit dudesolutions.com.
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