ROI & Savings — Schools & Education

A generator is a capital purchase in a sector that buys consumables, and the case has to survive a public board meeting. That means conservative numbers, a clear statement of what is not being claimed, and an honest account of where the value actually comes from — which in schools is usually not the headline chemical saving.

What to count today

Pull a full school year, not a term, and include the lines that sit outside the cleaning budget.

That last line deserves attention. In many districts, a meaningful share of sanitising spend never appears in the facilities budget at all, because individual schools buy wipes and sprays from their own funds. A business case built only on the central contract undercounts the real figure, sometimes badly. Ask three principals what they spend before you finalise the model.

What to count with a generator

• One-off: the system or systems, installation, feed-water treatment, filling stations and any distribution containers, plus commissioning and custodial training.
• Ongoing: food-grade salt, water, electricity, replacement filters, service, and test strips.

Per-building units or central generation?

Solution decays with light, heat and time, so a central model lives or dies on the delivery cadence, opaque closed containers and strength testing at the receiving building rather than at the generator. Published work on how these solutions hold their strength is indexed as stability of electrolysed oxidising water. If the district cannot commit to the round, put units in buildings.

A worked example

Hypothetical figures for a mid-size district — eight buildings, roughly 4,500 students — to show the method. Your audit uses your invoices and your building count.

Sensitivity

Holding the one-off at $62,000 and running costs at $6,000 a year:

The pattern: below roughly $20,000 a year of replaceable spend, a district-wide system is hard to justify on consumables alone, and a single unit serving the largest buildings is the better first step. Above it, the question becomes architecture rather than whether.

The effect that matters more than the saving

Most district business cases are written as a cost comparison, and most of the real value is not in that column.

When solution is expensive, cleaning frequency is rationed — quietly, by the person holding the bottle, without appearing in any report. When it is cheap and available at the point of use, the high-touch round gets done as the policy describes. The district is not buying a cheaper litre; it is buying the ability to execute the policy it already has.

That is a harder thing to put in a spreadsheet, but it can be measured: track high-touch completion rates before and after in a pilot building, alongside consumption. A completion rate that moves is more persuasive to a board than a unit price that falls, because it answers the question the board actually cares about.

Procurement routes

• Purchasing co-operative or existing contract vehicle — how most districts prefer to buy, and the route that avoids a standalone bid.
• Single-building pilot from the operating budget, with the district case built on measured results. The strongest option when the board is sceptical.
• Capital or facilities budget, where the system competes against other equipment rather than against consumables.
• Leasing, which converts the capital cost into an operating cost set directly against the consumable line it replaces. Available to US businesses — see leasing.
• Grant or bond funding tied to facilities, health or indoor air quality programmes, where the eligibility rules allow it.

Building the business case

1. Twelve months of central sanitising spend by product.
2. School-level spend, sampled from several buildings.
3. Building inventory: square footage, restroom count, cafeteria volume, athletics facilities, bus fleet.
4. Custodial headcount, shift pattern and current high-touch completion rate.
5. Feed-water hardness at candidate sites.
6. Internal delivery rounds that already exist between buildings.
7. Whatever the health office and state rules require to stay as it is.

The free sanitation audit turns this into a written model and sizes the system, and says so plainly when a district is below the line.

Presenting it to a board

The business case succeeds or fails in a public meeting, so build it for that room rather than for a spreadsheet review.

Lead with the problem the board already recognises — usually that the cleaning policy says one thing and staffing allows another — and present the generator as an answer to that rather than as a technology. Use conservative figures and say they are conservative. Show the pilot data if you have it, because a measured result from one of the district’s own buildings outweighs any vendor projection. State plainly what is not being claimed: no efficacy claims, no promise about illness rates, no substitute for ventilation or hand hygiene. And have a two-sentence answer ready for the question that will come from the floor about what is being sprayed near children.

Anticipate three objections. “Why not just buy more wipes?” — answer with cost per surface and waste. “Is this a gimmick?” — answer with the chemistry and the fact that the same approach is used in food plants and on ships. “What happens when it breaks?” — answer with the service arrangement and the fallback stock, and have both in writing before the meeting.

One further preparation is worth the hour it takes. Ask the business office to confirm the school-level spend figure independently, because it is the number most likely to be challenged and the one a vendor cannot verify for you. A finance officer who has checked it themselves will defend it in the room; a figure that arrived in a supplier’s model will not survive the first sceptical question.

Frequently asked questions