Sector · Schools

Compliance you can prove to Ofsted, before they ask.

Continuous evidence for the standards a school actually carries — indoor air, water safety, thermal comfort, energy. The building keeps the record; you stop chasing it.

What We Keep Finding

Across the schools we've monitored, the same few things turn up every time.

01

Heat with nobody in

Over half-term the boiler fires to a timetable set years ago, warming empty classrooms for a week when no child is in. On a large site that's around £400 a day, spent heating no-one.

02

Stuffy rooms by mid-morning

A class of thirty pushes CO₂ past the 1,500 ppm BB101 line before break. Tired air, tired pupils — and no-one watching the number until someone complains.

03

The room that changed use

A store cupboard quietly becomes a teaching space. On the plan it needs no ventilation; in reality there are children in it all day. The data shows it long before an inspector would.

One School, Thirty Days

A real UK secondary school. Every classroom, five-minute logs, one month of teaching:

67%

of rooms breached at least once

9.6%

of teaching minutes too cold

8.4%

of teaching minutes too hot

3.0%

of minutes with CO₂ over 2,000 ppm

Schools don't fail safely — they run cold, hot and stuffy, often on the same day. A one-off survey misses all of it.

The Rules Changed In February

Air quality stopped being a box ticked at construction.

BB101 tells an architect how to design a compliant classroom. It says nothing about whether the room stays compliant in week thirty. For years, that gap was nobody's problem.

In February 2026 the DfE's new guidance closed it: schools should regularly monitor ventilation and air quality across their buildings — and be able to show the data. The duty moved from the design stage to every teaching day.

And it lands hardest on the children: a child breathes roughly twice the air an adult does for their size, so a stuffy room reaches them first. Stale air is lost teaching time.

under 800 ppmgood ventilation
800–1,500 ppmtake action
over 1,500 ppmact now

The DfE's CO₂ traffic light — the new common language for school air.

See It, Then Act On It

Show it simply, then act on it.

A clear view is genuinely useful — at a glance, how each block's air, heat and water are doing, on a floorplan anyone can read. Most platforms stop there.

We don't. When a room crosses a line — CO₂ over BB101, a hot tap below 50°C, a classroom overheating against TM52 — the reading becomes a job. It goes to the caretaker or the contractor in the tools they already use, with the room, the standard and the likely fix, and it's chased until it's closed.

A chart has never aired a classroom. The view and the action — not one or the other.

Standards In Scope
BB101Ventilation, thermal comfort and indoor air quality in schools
HSG274Legionella control in the water system
HHSRSHealth & Safety Rating, where it applies
CIBSE TM52Overheating risk
DECDisplay Energy Certificate — your operational energy rating
Where The Job Lands

No new app for your team to learn.

The work goes where they already are — email, Microsoft 365, your helpdesk or CAFM — with the location, the standard and a suggested fix.

If it isn't actioned in time, it climbs: to the site manager, to the trust, to the duty board, until it's closed with evidence. The email can't get lost.

The Audit Trail

The evidence is already written.

When a governor, an inspector or the trust asks how the estate is doing, the answer isn't a scramble. The record built itself — every reading, every job, every fix, on one timeline you can scroll.

A certificate proves one day a year. This proves the rest of it.

The Funding Follows The Data

The money moved the same way.

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme is into a £1.17 billion phase. The DfE expects every school to hold a climate action plan. The newest learning-estate programmes pay out over twenty-five years — only while the building keeps hitting its measured benchmarks.

The common thread: funding follows measured outcomes, not promises. The same per-room log that proves a classroom's air also proves the kWh saving behind the bid. One install, both jobs.

Switch It Off First

Your school is heating empty classrooms.

Schools typically waste 20–30% of their energy out of hours — evenings, weekends and holidays. Across measured schools: 53% of gas burned with nobody in, 97 kW running at 3am, holiday classrooms held at 21–27°C when 12°C protects the building.

Put your annual spend into the estimator and see what your school is quietly wasting — and the pathway from controls to solar to a school microgrid.

Next Step

See what your school is quietly telling you.

A scoping call, and a first read on the air, heat and water across your site.