New Year, New Digital Configurator to Accelerate School Construction
The Hawai‘i School Facilities Authority (SFA) kicked off the new year with the unveiling of Akamai, a new digital configurator that accelerates the construction of new school buildings and the renovation of existing school classrooms. The digital configurator is capable of doing the work of multiple teams with specialized skills. The result: time and cost savings over conventional architectural and engineering methods.
“Technology is changing the way everyone is doing business. SFA is moving the state forward and fulfilling our critical mission of building school facilities smarter and more efficiently,” said Riki Fujitani, SFA’s executive director. “We can cut the time for pre-planning construction tasks by 60 percent and trim our use of state funds by up to 15 percent over traditional methods. We want to make out-of-the box approaches and innovation the new norm.”
The average age of our public school buildings is more than 50 years old and were envisioned to be static classrooms with neat rows of desks and chairs in mind. ”Our Akamai system optimizes classroom spaces to accommodate new, dynamic teaching methods for 21st century learning. This also frees up human architects to address other, more complex issues of design.
“SFA is doubling down on our efforts to be a catalyst for positive change in our state by adopting standardized designs to avoid having to reinvent the wheel for each new school building project,” Fujitani said. “This also lowers maintenance costs in the long run because all schools will eventually have the same building parts.”
SFA in the News
SFA was recently featured on Hawaiʻi News Now Sunrise with Casey Lund. The seven segments cover a variety of themes, including the Akamai digital configurator, the Mililani High School teacher workforce housing project, and pre-k facilities.
SFA's Akamai digital configurator was also featured on KHON2. Riki Fujitani, executive director of the Hawaiiʻ School Facilities Authority, explained it has a new way to build schools - faster and more cost-effectively.
SFA has commissioned MKThink, a local strategic planning and architectural firm with offices in Honolulu and San Francisco, to rethink the way schools are built to accelerate the complete lifecycle of the design-to-build process, starting with the planning and design phases, so that badly needed classrooms can be completed at a faster pace.
This business process improvement initiative harnesses technology to deliver results and cost savings. Over the past six months, MKThink’s CEO Nate Goore, Director of Client Success Chris Hong, and Director of Business Development Emilio Goldenhersch have served as the masterminds behind this initiative. They are adeptly weaving together more than a dozen different existing software systems to create a powerful, integrated, one-stop shop system that seamlessly completes the school planning phase with a few clicks, tasks that conventional methods would require months to complete.
Users fill in the number of students and the grades that need to be served in a specific geography and address, the type of construction suggested for a project, and whether it is a new instructional building or a classroom replacement project. The interface then displays the optimal configuration of the school within the proposed square footage or parcel of land, along with the estimated project cost and projected funding requirements.
MKThink anticipates the system will be fully developed and ready to be deployed with all of the features and functionality by early 2027, and plans to start using the first phase of the configurator for the new central Maui school.
SFA Board Chair's Commentary in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Build Schools Better for Isles' Students
By Jan Iwase
Hawai‘i students from pre-kindergarten to grade 12 are our future. We owe it to our children to provide them with the best education while they are in their formative years. It is our kuleana to put the next generation on a trajectory for a better future.
The condition of a school building and classroom design have a profound influence on a child’s ability to learn and grow academically, socially, and emotionally. Contemporary instructional trends such as co-curricular team-teaching and project-based learning require new classroom configurations so that students can have rewarding, educational experiences. Classrooms must also be designed to be future-proof. As the field of education evolves, classrooms must also be reconfigured to meet the changing needs of students and teachers.
But how do we renovate existing spaces or build new schools to meet the needs of students in a timely, cost-effective and efficient manner?
