Our first fireside chat of 2022 is with business thought leader Jonathan Coyles, Director at EO Consulting.

Recorded towards the end of last year, we’ve been keen to speak with Jonathan as his company helps schools, academies and Trusts deal with something that is becoming more and more pressing each year: how do they become more energy-efficient, hit carbon targets, and save money at the same time?

EO Consulting has created a standard for collecting condition, energy and compliance data so that user-friendly business intelligence dashboards can be created that enable reporting and benchmarking to be done within and across MATs and allow data to be analysed by asset, element and priority to aid strategic estate investment planning. They count several of the larger Multi-Academy Trusts among their clients.

It’s a great fireside chat, and Jonathan provides insight into:

• His journey through the world of education services from working with PFI contracts to being involved in one of the earliest academies (Grace Academy), project managing IT and ultimately becoming the Operations Director.
• The creation of EO Consultancy and their goal of helping organisations become more efficient and more effective through the clever use of dashboards and analysis
• Why spending lots of time understanding the needs of MATs was crucial to them developing the service they offer today: what they do makes a difference.
• How dashboards and data are not the answer to everything but should provide the insight to help schools, academies and MATs save money.
• Hitting carbon targets early, and how this is completely possible if you’re armed with the right information.
• The project management and additional help Barker Associates provide once a plan has been identified.
• What drives EO Consulting as a business?
• Where energy is wasted: 40% of energy is spent when there is no one in the school building!
• The importance of the learning environment, and how being aware of how and when energy and resources are being used plays a part in that.
• Getting the whole education estate into a condition that’s conducive to learning, reduces the carbon footprint, and makes it more efficient and effective as a result.
• What Jonathan would like to see from the government in the coming years to support schools, academies and MATs, and the effect of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS)
• The top five quick wins schools can put in place right now to become more energy-efficient and save money.

We’ve split the interview into three shorter parts for you to watch and listen to – enjoy!

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P.S. We’re aware that some of the audio is a bit rough in places so we’re working on getting a transcript created to accompany this Q&A – we’ll add once completed