Sponne School

About the client

Sponne School is a high-performing, co-educational secondary school with 1,200 pupils situated in Towcester, Northamptonshire. In March 2011, Sponne converted to an Academy and also achieved an Ofsted accreditation as an ‘Outstanding’ school.

The challenge

Having received a grant from the EFA to replace its oil-fired boilers and convert from oil to gas, the school needed to secure the gas supply to the new boilers. The school was spending circa £60,000 pa on heating oil with these costs continuing to spiral due to the rising price of energy. After preliminary investigations the school was finding it difficult to get a proposal from the suppliers it was dealing with.

The solution

BCR Associates was engaged to evaluate the best new gas supply solution for the school and manage the energy supply contracts. We worked closely with the School Business Manager, on-site engineers and external design agencies to provide an end-to-end project management service, leveraging our strong supplier relationships, to provide a quicker response to the proposal than other sources.

With the infrastructure work complete, we tendered the initial contract set-up work to a number of suppliers to achieve the best prices for the client for both gas and electricity contracts.

The results

Initial costing of the pipework reinforcement and new meter housing was £80,000; we assessed alternative ways to complete the conversion. A more cost-effective, like-for-like method was found at a cost of £26,000 (a saving of £54,000).

The reviewed electricity contract realised a 37% saving in the first year. The new gas contracts were tendered to the market and the most appropriate contract for the school was awarded to the most competitive supplier.