Amid the drip, drip, drip of news about government dysfunction and inefficiency, it’s good — necessary — to hear about improvements.
Welcome news came this week from the state Department of Education, as it stepped up its game in dealing with facilities maintenance — namely, roof repairs.
Using a process called job-order contracting (JOC), the DOE now relies on several companies, picked in advance via competitive bidding, to do common repair jobs at fixed prices under a multiyear contract. That allowed recent roofing projects at six public schools to be done in a period averaging 34 days — from procurement to completion — that typically would have taken about seven years. That seven-year drag involves fund appropriation, project design, bidding, protest period over awards, construction and sometimes change orders and cost overruns.
Thanks to JOC, long-awaited school-roof projects just completed ranged from Castle High’s auditorium, to Honaunau Elementary portable classrooms on Hawaii island.
At the end of last year, the DOE had a repair-and-maintenance backlog totaling $868 million, with roofing the biggest category. That whopping figure surfaced in December — nearly triple the $293 million believed at the start of 2018 — after school officials realized chronically bad accounting and project management had underestimated the scope of deferred maintenance.
“We have well over $100 million worth of roofing projects that need to be accomplished throughout the state,” assistant superintendent for facilities Dann Carlson said this week.
It’s high time to pick up the pace and pare down the repairs backlog, using JOC to save time and money. Further, this technique should be modeled across all state government agencies, to be replicated as soon and as often as possible. Hawaii taxpayers need to see that the drip, drip, drip can be stopped — when it comes to both leaky roofs and government inefficiency.
