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DOE's improvements to RESO A program and project management
5:53:40
ยท
4 min
Kevin Moran, Chief Schools Operation Officer at NYC Department of Education, outlines the department's efforts to improve the RESO A program and overall project management processes. He acknowledges past issues and details the steps taken to address them.
- DOE has reorganized its approach to capital work, improving coordination with the School Construction Authority
- They've addressed a backlog of projects dating back to 2018
- New processes have been implemented to ensure timely payment to vendors and improved transparency
- DOE commits to quarterly meetings and posting job information on school homepages for better accountability
Kevin Moran
5:53:40
Yes, thank you, Chair Joseph.
5:53:41
I'd like to start to thank you and the council for your support of schools.
5:53:45
The RESO A program, the use of discretionary funding is a huge win for our students all gathered here for our families, our school communities, our staff.
5:53:54
So it is our goal to improve the process, to be transparent and accountable and efficient.
5:54:01
And so I do definitely want to apologize because we can do better.
5:54:07
We started looking at the way the Division of School Facilities operated on the business side of the house last year as now growth of the last hearing.
5:54:16
Very clear direction from our leadership team.
5:54:18
We weren't doing a great job on how we were financing, how we were procuring, how we were budgeting ultimately and actually running our capital program and our health and safety.
5:54:28
And there were many, many things we took a good long look at how fix things going forward.
5:54:33
So with some of the reorganization and a focus on capital, we took some steps.
5:54:37
We identified the previous problem.
5:54:39
You know, in operations often today's problem was yesterday's solution.
5:54:43
So we looked at it and said did it work then?
5:54:45
And at times it did.
5:54:47
But then we went back and said how can we make this better?
5:54:50
And then we got into what was known, as we've been talking about, is like our backlog of cases.
5:54:56
But I'd say fundamentally on process, we decided to move from an expense payout quickly through once we work with the school construction authority on an LOW number, a low level work number, and a scope and a budget, that's the good hard work, getting the scope and budget right, proceeding then to get a CP.
5:55:12
Previously, we would wait till the end of the year to try to true up and we were disallowed and it didn't work well.
5:55:18
Now we've worked hand in glove with the school construction authority on how we do our capital work.
5:55:23
And so we advance through that sequence.
5:55:25
We get our LOW number, get our scope, our budget, refine it, make sure it's tight, get it to CEP, the certificate of proceed from OME to move ahead and then start the work because the vendor was also complaining that they weren't getting reimbursed in time when they finished the jobs.
5:55:40
So the new process has yielded some early results.
5:55:45
I'll start off with what was our backlog.
5:55:47
And our backlog represented essentially less than one project per school building.
5:55:52
We had about seven zero nine projects that were not attended to prior to FY '24.
5:55:58
And so from 2024, we actually have 112 ready to go out the door any day now.
5:56:03
But as far back, your question was how far back.
5:56:06
We had a job or a few that go back from '23 to '18.
5:56:09
And that was a very large number.
5:56:11
That is not 112, that's five ninety seven jobs.
5:56:15
That over time the scope changed, the priorities changed, and that presents an opportunity for us to work with each council member, specific end school community, and say for whatever the reason the job didn't proceed at that time, it is still here and let's talk about that.
5:56:30
So that's going to be our work this spring.
5:56:33
And then it brings us to the here and now, the 24 jobs.
5:56:36
In our pipeline right now, we have four forty one jobs pending.
5:56:40
We're aggressively working on that.
5:56:42
And then we have the new commitments of FY '25.
5:56:46
In partnership with the SCA, we have two sixty three jobs in the pipeline.
5:56:50
But I talked about the early wins.
5:56:52
Over that same time period, we did complete 2,034 jobs.
5:56:57
The bad news was it was actually nine forty four of them were not necessarily paid for.
5:57:03
So we had to do a fair amount of work to pay back every vendor through the process.
5:57:08
So as of August we started, we've pushed already two zero one jobs through payment for 59,000,000.
5:57:15
Additionally, we have three sixty one jobs referred for encumbrance now, which is representative of 53,000,000.
5:57:22
And the final piece of our backlog is representing three twenty two jobs at roughly 28,000,000.
5:57:28
So there's a fair amount of work, but we reorganized ourselves.
5:57:32
We weren't doing a great job categorizing our work and following our work and then making sure our vendors were made whole.
5:57:39
So some of the complaints I heard in the earlier testimony was vendors weren't or subcontractors even.
5:57:43
I heard some subcontractors saying they weren't being paid.
5:57:45
We had to make sure that our GCs were managing well, our contracts were doing the work, we were getting the required information back and making sure we could actually pay them through the appropriate process.
5:57:54
So we believe there's a time and effort here that helped and we look forward to working with members on solutions and figure out each project.
5:58:03
But also committed to posting the jobs that we receive from the school construction authority on the school's homepage.
5:58:09
So we're going to be fully transparent.
5:58:11
And along with Nina and the SEA, would do quarterly meetings for jobs assigned to us.
5:58:16
This way there's no slippage here with the expectation of student, the expectation of member and school community to make sure our contractors know never to work at risk, make sure they're following the book and then we'll make sure they get paid.