Report 2011-116.1 Recommendations

To ensure public safety and provide public assurance that school districts construct projects in accordance with approved plans, the department, in conjunction with the division, should pursue legislative changes to the Field Act that would prohibit occupancy in cases in which the division has identified significant safety concerns.

To better use the enforcement tools at its disposal, the division should continue and expand its use of both orders to comply and stop work orders, as defined in its regulations. The division should also develop performance measures to assess the success of any efforts it makes to address safety concerns and reduce the number of uncertified projects.

To ensure that it clearly justifies the reasons a project's noted issues merit a particular classification, the division should either modify its current policies regarding classifying types of uncertified projects or develop new policies, including requiring documentation of the rationale behind project-specific classifications. It should use its classifications to prioritize its efforts to follow up on uncertified projects based on risk and to better inform the public regarding the reasons it has not certified projects.

To reduce the number of uncertified projects, the division should implement initiatives to follow up with school districts on uncertified projects. Those initiatives should include, at a minimum, regularly sending each district a list of its uncertified projects and assessing the success of the division's follow-up efforts.

To ensure it is providing adequate oversight of school district construction projects, the division should develop robust procedures for monitoring inspectors' submission of semi-monthly reports. The division should also maintain all semi-monthly reports in its project files.

To ensure it is providing adequate oversight of school district construction projects, the division should develop and document an overall strategy that establishes specific expectations for conducting site visits and monitoring construction. The division should then record and compare its actual visits and monitoring efforts to its planned actions. The division should document explanations for any deviations from its plans.

To ensure it is providing adequate oversight of school district construction projects, the division should establish consistent criteria for entering data into its database on key aspects of projects, such as the dates for the start and end of construction.

To mitigate risks arising from the relationship between inspectors, school districts, and project managers, the division should develop formal procedures and explicit directions for field engineers to ensure that they establish a presence on project sites and provide adequate oversight of inspectors during construction.

To ensure that it approves inspectors prior to the start of project construction, the division should streamline its approval process by reviewing inspectors' workloads and past experience using the data it already maintains.

To ensure that certified inspectors are knowledgeable about current code requirements, the division should not excuse inspectors from required trainings and should improve its process for identifying expired certification exam scores. Further, the division should consistently follow and document its procedures for verifying the past employment of inspector applicants.

To ensure that it formally monitors inspectors' performance, the division should reestablish a process for evaluating inspectors that provides consistent documentation of performance. The division should make this information accessible to appropriate staff.

To address areas in which its staff do not currently have expertise, the division should finalize its field pilot and take subsequent steps to ensure it has qualified staff to provide oversight of accessibility; fire and life safety; and the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing aspects of construction.

To better manage its construction oversight and close-out functions, the division should develop measures to assess those functions and it should periodically report the results to the public on its Web site.

To address possible staffing problems, the division should use documented workload metrics to perform an assessment of its current staffing levels and determine its staffing needs. It should revisit the field pilot and make necessary changes to reflect its understanding of its current staffing situation.