About Insular ABCs Initiative

Insular ABCs Initiative

The US Office of Insular Affair's (OIA) Insular ABCs Initiative is a multi-phase effort focused on improving the physical condition of the US Insular Area Public Schools (in Guam, Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands). OIA has retained the US Army Corps of Engineers, Honolulu District to manage the Initiative. The Corps has, in turn, retained HHF Planners as the A/E project manager. The "ABCs Team" referred to in this report consists of the Corps' Project Management team and the HHF Planners team consisting of Honolulu based planners, architects and engineers and embedded personnel in each of the four territories.

The Initiative has been sequenced in three major phases: an initial feasibility study and inventory phase completed in 2011 (Phase 1); a comprehensive school building condition assessment completed in 2013 (Phase 2); and Phase 3 which commenced in late 2014 and expected to extend through Fiscal Year 2019. This report focuses on the accomplishments of the first year of Phase 3.

OIA established two major objectives for Phase 3: to reduce the amount of deferred maintenance (DM) projects starting with the highest priority projects; and 2) build local capacity to prevent the DM backlog from re-occurring. The DM reduction portion Phase 3 is divided into two general sub phases: 1) development of a multi-year work plan; and 2) embedding facility managers in each local school agency to manage the work orders. The Work Plan essentially converted thousands of items identified in the Phase 2 condition assessment into preliminary work orders, sorted by priority. Program Managers for each territory were deployed in October 2015 and have begun to manage work plan execution.