HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The pressure is weighing on the Guam Department of Education to address mold mitigation and fencing repair in the interest of health and safety, but the arduous road has been riddled with bumps and has Superintendent Kenneth Erik Swanson expressing dismay at the slow pace of post-typhoon recovery.
“The Typhoon Mawar DLAN status, I don’t mind saying, I’m disappointed on where this is at this time,” Swanson told the legislative committee on education during an oversight hearing held Thursday evening.
Funded by $20 million the Legislature provided to GDOE for post-Typhoon Mawar recovery, the Defense Local Area Network has had open tickets on mold mitigation and fencing repair and replacement projects for public schools since June 2023.
“I signed off (Thursday) on updated specification that have gone back now to the procurement folks at GSA to clarify scope of work … for both mold mitigation and the fencing,” Swanson said.
The General Services Agency had questions with regard to the scope of work, which had to be narrowed down for clarity.
“So that contractors would be more able to provide a quality product, the method we are using is an (invitation for bid), actually going out for bid for this work. And that’s being processed through the GSA procurement channels,” Swanson said.
The project to harden school perimeters and mitigate mold was slowed by internal challenges within GSA, he said.
“There have been several different people in the procurement cycle through the Department of Administration and GSA, so the turnover in that office has slowed the process down,” Swanson reported.
GDOE and GSA agreed that the IFB needed “to have better details” in “critical areas.”
“What was missing before is the individual, who is no longer with us, who wrote the specifications forgot to put gates in and miscalculated size of gate posts and corner posts. When we get down to do the work, that’s going to be very important. Then the specific requirements needed and certification to do the mold mitigation work was not specified in the contract in the language,” Swanson said.
That has all been cleared up, Swanson said.
Despite the challenges at GSA, Swanson said he was “reasonably confident” the tough road has been left behind.
“I am reasonably confident that we are through the difficulties of getting these two projects and (Assistant Attorney General Fred Nishihira) at the AG’s office who is monitoring this for us is confident that this is accurate enough, clean enough, so that it can go through the process in a quick amount of time and get boots on the ground doing the work,” Swanson said.
In the eight months time it took to get to this stage in the procurement process, Swanson said he has gone back and forth in wanting the $20 million back from Department of Administration, to letting the DLAN process play out. This sparked the curiosity of Sen. Joanne Brown.
“I am curious why is it still through the GSA rather than your own procurement and how is the funding going to be put in place to address the mold mitigation and the fencing?” Brown asked.
“Ouch,” Swanson said. “The estimate that I saw for the mold mitigation is approaching $10 million. It’s less for the fencing, but we have a significant number of schools, I think 29 campuses that need fencing replaced.”
Of the $20 million, $14 million remained for the two projects, he said.
Swanson said the next steps involve GDOE conducting a legal review and final inspections before heading to GSA for transmittal to the Attorney General’s Office, published advertisement and bid submissions.
Contract award is anticipated for mid-March, he said.
