In 2007 the Portuguese government launched a major school modernisation programme, and has taken steps to ensure the long-term sustainability of facilities. A specially created state-owned company, Parque Escolar (PE) has already completed 104 schools; 70 are work-in-progress and an additional 39 are under design or tender. Parque Escolar is feeding lessons learned over the past few years into its reference material and practises so as to continually improve its projects and contribute to the overall development of Portuguese construction techniques. It is now focusing on how best to manage the life cycle of the 104 completed schools in order to achieve high performance levels. This paper sets out some of the practises which are being implemented to this end. (Contains 9 footnotes.)