Friday 15th August, 2025

Summer works in education. Short timeframes, lasting impact.

While teachers, parents and pupils put their feet up for a well earned six-week break, some jetting off to far-flung corners of the world (often at eye-watering prices!), the summer holidays mark a very different kind of busy season for those working behind within construction.

July to September is traditionally the busiest period of the year for roofing contractors. The combination of longer days, more predictable weather, and reduced footfall in schools and on the roads creates the ideal conditions for carrying out major refurbishment works.

In the education sector especially, expectations are high. Tenders are often secured in Q2/3 with the understanding that work will begin the moment pupils and staff break for summer, and be fully completed before they return. There’s little margin for delay. Headteachers and councils are planning for that first day back long before the last one ends, and for them, works simply must be out of the way.

For contractors on the other hand, that means careful planning, reliable delivery, and working with precision to tight, immovable deadlines.

Beyond the practical though, the challenge for a roofing contractor isn’t just to view the building for what it physically is, i.e. a set of drawings, a specification, and x square metres of roof to strip and relay within six-weeks. It’s to understand what the project actually represents to the school or nursery.

 

What makes this project so critical from the headteacher’s perspective?

 

At its simplest, it’s about delivering a dry, safe, functional space so that children have a place to learn.

Look a little deeper though, and the social realities behind the project start to come into focus. For the children about to begin their schooling journey, this building will be their first structured environment outside the home. It’s where they’ll learn to share, to speak with confidence, to listen, and to laugh. It’s where friendships begin, personalities take shape, and the earliest foundations of who they are and who they’ll become are laid.

That’s why the building must be safe, dry, and ready. So that when they step through the doors in early September, they have a space to do just that.

When a roofing contractor steps off site in September, there’s pride in leaving behind a high-quality roof that is watertight and built to last. But the real impact goes beyond the surface. What matters just as much is what happens underneath that roof.

It’s easy in the day-to-day to lose sight of the bigger picture. Ask a roofer what they do, and you’ll likely hear, “I lay felt,” or “I install roofs.” Ask an estimator, and they might say, “I price projects accurately.” Both are true, but they’re only part of the story.

 

Thinking of the lasting impact of roof refurbishment

 

Whether you're delivering a project or taking some time off, it’s worth stepping back to think about the broader value of roofing in general.

Making buildings safe and fit for purpose, roofing contractors help create the environments where real life happens. The roof may be above it all, but its impact runs right through everything that happens beneath it.

It might sound contrived, but an interesting way to look at this is that a roof installed today, with a twenty-year warranty, will still be in place long after the children beneath it have moved on. By the time that guarantee runs its course, they’ll be adults, shaped in part by the environment where they spent their earliest years.

Take the nursery pictured above in Stockport. In two decades’ time, those same children could be becoming nurses, teachers, or tradespeople. One might go on to play for England, like Phil Foden. Another could become an actor like Claire Foy, or a musician like those in The Blossoms.

That’s the wider context of these summer works. They’re not just about materials and the deadline, they’re about enhancing spaces where futures quietly begin.

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