HE‘E Coalition members are deeply disappointed that $465 million in funds allocated for CIP (capital improvement plan) line-items has not been expeditiously deployed and understand that funding thus lapsed will be returned to the state for other vital needs. Delayed CIP is a problem that has been discussed for years.

In studying this serious problem and failure to deliver for our keiki, we see that a system for Hawaii Department of Education CIP is already working at the DOE: it’s called Facilities Asset Management. We urge implementation for CIP line-items in addition to the deferred maintenance currently employing it.

The $2 billion in unspent CIP funds and the impending lapsing of $465 million for DOE projects has received much attention in recent months. One of the main contributors to the backlog of CIP line-items is the traditional process of appropriation, design, bidding and construction, which simply takes too long. DOE continues to use the same process that the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) used when DOE took over management of school facilities from DAGS through the Reinventing Education Act of 2004 (Act 51).

It didn’t work well in 2004 and still doesn’t work well in 2023.

In response, the DOE indicated that it and the Board of Education are working to re-evaluate the department’s CIP spending and construction processes in 2024. However, there is a more efficient process already working in the DOE and expanding it to include CIP line-items would go a long way toward expediting vital facilities.

Through the Act 40 (2019) and Act 6 (2020) budget bills, the Legislature allocated $140 million for a pilot program to address DOE’s deferred maintenance projects. In 2019, the DOE used these funds to institute a pilot program for roof repair, which used a streamlined appropriation process called Job Order Contracting (JOC). The DOE repaired the first roof under this program at the Castle High School Auditorium in May 2019. What previously took the DOE seven years in the traditional process was completed in three months under the JOC process. In addition, construction efficiency, which measures new construction/appropriation, improved to 71% from 46% under the pilot program.

Fast-forward to December 2023. DOE is now using the Facilities Asset Management (FAM) System for all project allocations under its deferred maintenance lump-sum budget. FAM includes the JOC process along with another procurement method called Prequalified Small Contractors (PSC). FAM projects are managed locally by the affected district, and there is an online project management platform so the public can track specific jobs.

FAM uses prequalified architects, engineers and contractors strategically aligned by districts to get things done in weeks and months, instead of years. All the normal delays in the public sector are removed from the process. According to the FAM Dashboard on the DOE Facilities Portal, of the $506.6 million estimated deferred maintenance projects, the FAM process has appropriated over $283 million in jobs, with $64 million in jobs ready and waiting for legislative funding, and $89 million in jobs still in the evaluation stages.

Therefore, 86% of the FAM appropriations are completed or moving (only 14% pending). Compare this to the $1.2 billion of CIP line-item funds (58%) ready to lapse.

Other school districts have employed similar facilities asset management systems. Washington state, Oakland Unified School District and Austin Independent School District are all examples of school districts that have built their successful facilities program around asset management.

FAM does not remove all bottlenecks from the CIP process. Any required permitting, for example, is not controlled by the DOE. FAM streamlines what is in DOE control. If we expand the Hawaii DOE FAM System, we can have greater efficiency in addressing the needs of our school facilities and make a difference for our students. Let’s work together to support and expand this system so that we can effectively utilize scarce funding to help our schools and students.

Cheri Nakamura is director of HE‘E (Hui for Excellence in Education), a statewide coalition working to improve public education in Hawaii (heecoalition.org).