Modern, Respectful Learning Facilities
Our school facilities play an important role in our effort to be hubs of innovation.
In order to realize our vision of school facilities that enable world-class learning opportunities, we must fast-track solutions for ongoing needs at our aging schools, while preparing for prioritized facilities that meet future learning requirements.
To that end, in working with the Office of School Facilities and Support Services, I'm excited to announce that we've initiated a redesign of our facilities maintenance program to align our strategic focus on providing respectful learning environments with our core value of ensuring access to a quality public education for every student in every community across the state.
The initiative, under way now, is being called Future Schools Now to convey the urgency of modernizing all Hawaii public schools to foster innovative learning. The three-part strategy involves:
- Streamlining how the Department contracts repair services to fast-track priority projects;
- Increasing the community's access to project details with an online database under development; and
- Implementing a data-driven analysis to plan for future school needs.
PRINCIPAL VOICES NEEDED
The HIDOE ʻohana is a tri-level partnership between school-complex-state, forming a powerful voice and decision-making structure on behalf of our students. As an example of this, the Secondary Principals Forum has been providing input on the process for facilities remedies for more than a year now. We used this feedback to look at our overall needs by Complex level, and then overall in terms of our Capital Improvements Program (CIP) request. We are seeking principals who would be willing to participate in the next Fiscal Biennium budget (2019-2021) at the State Capitol beginning January 2019. Legislators and stakeholders need to hear from school leaders directly about their needs. If you want to be part of this tri-level representative team, please contact the Policy, Innovation, Planning and Evaluation Branch at 808-586-3800 to get involved. Together we will present a unified voice
JOB ORDER CONTRACTING (JOC)
Among the initiatives under Future Schools Now, the one I believe will most directly impact schools is the deployment of a new contracting process for common repairs.
HIDOE will be using a proven method called Job Order Contracting, or JOC, to expedite work on repairing school roofs, the largest category on our repair and maintenance (R&M) backlog.
The method will allow the Department to contract several vendors through competitive bidding for common projects over the life of a multiyear contract, rather than having to bid out individual jobs for repairs.
Using the traditional design-bid-build method takes on average seven years to move through the appropriation, design, bidding, construction management (CM) and construction phases; JOC can be completed within months. It will also drive more of our appropriations to construction.
We plan to start with roof repairs and will be awarding up to three roofing contractors per island on Oahu and the Big Island using JOC starting in December, with Maui to be added in the near future. The aim is to eventually handle all school roof repairs using this method; heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and electrical upgrades will follow in future rollouts.
CIP PROJECT TRACKER
HIDOE also is creating an online database of its CIP projects statewide to better track them in the pipeline and establish a "system of record." The database is being beta-tested internally with HIDOE facilities and Complex Area administrators, with broader staff access planned for early 2019 along with state legislators, who will have access to this system in time for the 2019 legislative session.
A public version of the project database will be developed for the broader community and scheduled for release during the 2019-20 school year.
HIDOE has engaged Jacobs Engineering to provide a comprehensive facilities study that will provide a 14-point analysis to drive future facilities development. The study will establish a master plan that is data-driven and will ensure the state gives equal weight to "where we need to go" with "what we need fixed now."
R&M BACKLOG
R&M projects in the CIP Project Tracker as of Nov. 8, 2018. Click image to expand size.
As part of the Future Schools Now effort, we also will be restating our repair and maintenance backlog to better align with industry standards and accurately reflect pending projects that require funding to complete.
HIDOE is shifting away from a focus on a multimillion-dollar total and instead moving toward tracking R&M needs across the system according to the type of repair — by number of projects and estimated cost. (See chart, above.) This will increase visibility around the greatest needs in our schools and allow decision-makers to target resources for priority areas.
Reducing the R&M backlog, which contains approximately 3,800 projects, is included in the Department's Strategic Plan as a statewide success indicator. Going forward, HIDOE will use data from the CIP Project Tracker to provide real-time R&M updates as part of its quarterly fiscal reports to the state Board of Education.
To learn more, please see this internal Future Schools Now factsheet. (Intranet login required.)
As you can see, from these facilities modernization efforts and my Kick Off Your Week on Google for Education from last week, everything we do across our HIDOE system must meet the requirements of our work today and tomorrow, with students always at the center driving our purpose.
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