New playground construction
system pays off for schools

Lower costs mean 92 schools --
17 more than expected --
get the new equipment

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By Pat Gee
pgee@starbulletin.com

The state Department of Education should finish installing the last of 92 new playgrounds at elementary schools in July after seven months of construction.

Ken Kajihara, project manager in the Department of Education's Facilities and Support Services Branch, said the total is 17 more than the playgrounds originally planned for construction with $4.5 million allotted two years ago.

The old playgrounds were declared unsafe a few years ago and inaccessible to the disabled under federal guidelines.

The department will also be able to provide at least 50 more schools with new playground equipment with an additional $2.3 million approved by the Legislature for the next fiscal year, Kajihara said.

For the next 50 playgrounds -- and "maybe we can squeeze out 60," he added -- the Department of Education plans to use the same competitive bidding process to get the best price and value from the vendors that it used for the first 92 playgrounds.

But this time, the schools will not have the option of selecting customized designs; they will only be able to choose from five or six standardized designs, he said. This should make it possible for vendors to do more bulk purchasing, which reduces the average cost of each playground, Kajihara said.

Of the approximately 180 public elementary schools in the state, about 100 applied for new equipment two years ago, he said. It was originally thought that $4.5 million allotted by the Legislature could fund the building of 75. But the addition of 17 playgrounds was made possible through a savings of $500,000 to $675,000 by the facilities branch when it decided to do the inspection and design approvals in-house instead of hiring a consultant, Kajihara said.

He also attributed the savings to the work of Connie Chun, a state procurement specialist with the department, who initiated a competitive bidding process among equipment vendors. This reduced the cost of each playground to $43,000 from the budgeted $55,000, he added.

The department was criticized for taking so long to install the playgrounds, but the process made it possible for the state to provide more playgrounds made of higher-quality equipment that will last longer, Kajihara said.