The initial round of construction bids for projects to cool Hawaii’s hottest public schools included proposals far above the per-classroom estimate the Department of Education had been using — in one case, by nearly 10 times the amount, an analysis of procurement documents shows.

Using early industry estimates, the department budgeted $40,000 as an “estimated median per classroom” cost to cover equipment for and installation of air conditioners. As recently as last month, the DOE said it expected to complete a state initiative to cool 1,000 classrooms this year for roughly $45 million, with most schools receiving solar-powered air conditioners to offset energy use.

Earlier this week DOE officials announced initial proposals had come in over budget for projects at six schools, prompting the department to halt the awarding of bids as it anticipates rebidding the work next month. Without revealing the names of bidders, Dann Carlson, the department’s assistant superintendent for school facilities, cited a $135,000-per-classroom bid.

“Prices like that would prohibit us from reaching our target of 1,000 classrooms,” Carlson recently wrote in an editorial for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “Hence, we are pushing back the construction of the projects as we continue to solicit more bids and look for ways to significantly lower the cost.”

That bid, however, is the “highest low bid” among the 18 proposals for the six projects, as it was the only bid on a 13-classroom project for Leihoku Elementary.

Procurement documents show the priciest per-classroom proposal came in at $360,770 to install solar-powered air conditioning in one portable classroom at Ewa Beach Elementary. That bid was submitted by Contech Engineering Inc. The lowest bid for the project was $102,000 from CC Engineering & Construction.

At $239,850 per classroom, Contech Engineering also bid the highest among five bidders for a five-classroom cooling project at August Ahrens Elementary. Contech officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

A project to cool five portable classrooms at Aliamanu Elementary attracted a high bid of $180,540 per classroom from Economy Plumbing & Sheet Metal Inc. and a low bid of $80,820 per classroom from CC Engineering & Construction, which also was the lowest bidder on two other cooling projects. The companies did not return requests for comment.

Carlson told the Board of Education this week that the department has outright rejected some of the bids and is working to renegotiate others under the state’s procurement laws, but anticipates rebidding most of the work in early July — likely delaying by several months a project that initially was envisioned to be completed by December. He pointed to increased labor costs due to the state’s construction boom and limited competition because the DOE pre-qualified only a small group of contractors to bid on the work. It has since expanded the pool to 50 companies from 16.

The high bids prompted one state lawmaker to ask the attorney general to investigate possible collusion among the contractors.

Rolf Christ, president of Honolulu-based R&R Solar Supply, said some of the contractors bidding on the heat abatement projects contacted him for price quotations, and he noticed “ridiculously oversized (air conditioning) systems” were incorporated into proposals. Consultants for the DOE analyzed the 33 schools deemed to be the hottest in the state to come up with the design plans that contractors are bidding on.

“I’m getting requests from contractors for materials so that they can bid on those jobs, and I’ve observed ridiculously oversized systems that are way too big to power the air conditioning that is required for the classrooms,” said Christ, who’s been in the business for 30 years and sits on the board of the Hawaii Solar Energy Association.

“One of the problems is that whoever designed those systems might not be that familiar with them and erred on the side of caution, oversizing storage and oversizing inverters in the neighborhood of six to eightfold what is really needed, and that has driven up the installation and material costs to astronomical proportions,” he said. (Solar inverters convert energy from solar panels into power that can be fed into the electrical grid for use.)

Christ said he believes the DOE’s decision to allow only general contractors to bid also contributed. “Many electricians and air conditioning contractors could handle the air-conditioning portion of these bids,” he said. “But now we have general contractors who will hire all kinds of subcontractors and mark up all that work.”

Christ said a solar-powered air-conditioning system his company helped design and donated to Farrington High School could cool roughly half a normal-size classroom for about $12,000 to $13,000 including equipment and installation. No electrical upgrades were required because the system didn’t connect to the electrical grid. “So two of those would come out to $26,000, and there you go, you have a classroom for $26,000,” he said.

Christ says the state’s accelerated timeline to complete the 1,000 classrooms by the end of the year may have rushed the process. “There was rushing to design, rushing to bid, rushing to understand the bid documents — that has all contributed to the confusion.”

NO COOLING OFF THESE PRICES

Ten Hawaii companies bid on the initial round of cooling projects at the state’s hottest schools as part of Gov. David Ige’s pledge to cool 1,000 classrooms this year. The proposals all came in far above the Department of Education’s earlier estimate of $40,000 per classroom for equipment and installation. Cooling projects at the six schools below call for solar-powered air conditioning, including stand-alone photovoltaic systems and hybrid systems that plug into the electric grid.

Source: Department of Education