The Priory Federation of Academies comprises The Priory Academy LSST, The Priory Witham Academy, and The Priory City of Lincoln Academy. The three Academies were formed of three secondary schools, a junior school and a nursery school.

The three Academies successfully opened in Sept 08, on time and on budget. Appleyards was responsible for the overall project management of this accelerated and complex project. The project was awarded to Appleyards in June 07 giving just 15 months to prepare the three Academies and five separate sites for opening. 

The accelerated timescale for this project required extensive project and stakeholder management techniques to identify the critical tasks and manage the Sponsors’ vision, predecessor school’s and internal project team’s resources. We developed a number of new and innovative project management techniques in order to suit this unique project in order to ensure that everyone involved understood what tasks they were responsible for, and what was required of them.

Being the first Federation of Academies, we were presented with a number of issues facing the project and were responsible for managing the complex governance model developed to enable all three schools to function under a single governing body.

As part of this project Appleyards conducted one of the largest and most extensive Academy consultations for this project involving over 40 separate consultation meetings.

The Priory Witham Academy and Priory City of Lincoln Academy will both receive new buildings in 2011/12. In addition to this Appleyards is now involved in the development of a boarding facility on the site of The Priory Academy LSST, which will also receive extensive refurbishment.

Challenges/Achievements

Due to the size of this project, the number of stakeholders involved, and the five separate sites forming the Federation of schools, we developed an extensive consultation and communications programme of engagement immediately following appointment. At the end of the consultation nearly 50 separate meetings had been held with the pupils, staff, parents and governors of the five predecessor schools, as well as other meetings with the public and local community groups.

One of the key challenges in this project was the development of an ICT implementation programme in order to allow the five schools, and eventual three Academy sites, to function as a Federation with close links and shared systems. This was made especially complicated due to the two new buildings planned for two of the sites, and need to integrate with the site which would only be receiving refurbishment.

In addition to Appleyards commission to project manage and provide education consultancy to the Federation of Academies project, we were further engaged to provide consultancy advice on the new boarding block to be situated at The Priory Academy LSST. For this we undertook a detailed feasibility study prior to securing capital funding for the project, following which we were able to provide advice on the design and management of the facility ensuring that the proposals remained within National standards for boarding schools.