Department of Education, Taipei City Government

●General Information

The Division of School Construction and Property Management was set up in August 1998, responsible for the supervision, assessment, compilation, and administration of construction projects and management of property belonging to municipal schools and social work organizations. In line with the Department’s various construction projects, upgrades have been implemented to improve school facilities and hence the quality of education. We aim to create a diverse, people-oriented educational environment to realize the vision set out in the white paper. The Department aims to effectively reduce the number of students per class and ease the burden of schools of which the enrollment quota has been filled for students to be entitled to a larger learning space. The various construction projects remain in progress. Improve the appearance of school buildings and make an ideal campus environment is the primary objective of a campus upgrade project. We will continue to pursue the goal of creating a safe, comfortable, beautiful, and student-oriented campus environment for our younger generation.

●Important Measures

1. Put in place standards for construction of school buildings to improve teaching quality and realize the vision of perpetual management and operation
The standards will govern the following: (1) the percentage of administrative area and space allocated for special subject classes, classrooms, and public service areas in elementary and high schools; (2) space entitlement per student/teacher or percentage of classroom area to total school area. School buildings are evaluated on the basis of 28 facility benchmarks with respect to the existing, exemplary and target conditions. The statistics offer schools good indications on formulating the space allocation plan for teaching areas and peripheral facilities. The information may also be used to estimate a reasonable construction area and budget to achieve the objectives of total capacity control and perpetual management.
2. Renovate school buildings to provide professional teaching/learning space
In order to renovate decaying school buildings to provide students with safe and healthy campuses while achieving the goal of green building for the sake of sustained development in compliance with energy conservation/carbon reduction principles, the Department shall adopt “Professional, Teamwork, Quality, Innovation and Sustained Development” as the core of its management strategy to effectively elevate the competitiveness of schools and cohesion amongst parents through campus refining engineering to make schools more effective and refined. In addition, the Department shall also construct campuses that are compliant to the requirements of excellence indicators to facilitate the harmony between people and the environment, while taking factors such as aesthetics, elegance, and energy efficiency into consideration to create campuses that are natural, cultural, artistic, and technologically advanced. On top of that, in an effort to promote refined education and create quality school environment, the Department has chosen Nan-Kang Senior High School and Min-Sheng Junior High School for 2005 and 2006 respectively as the specimen institutions. The results turned out to be very impressive and as such, the Department has drafted a mid-term plan of five years in duration (spanning from 2007 through 2011) to make critical investments of available resources in the construction of public spaces that are comfortable and safe to dramatically improve the competitiveness of old schools and neighborhood schools so as to achieve reasonable and fair allocation of resources. Based on the principle of “One school per administrative district” for school renovation and refinement, the average number of selected schools for this project will be between 12~15 schools per year. In 2007, 13 schools including Min-Lun Senior High School were selected; in 2008, 13 schools including Zhong-Zheng Senior High School were selected and 15 schools including Da-Zhi Senior High School have been chosen for 2009.
3. Construct safe and secured campus environment to ensure sustained operation
In an effort to construct safe and secure campus environment, and in compliance to the “Procedure Governing the Assessment of All Public Buildings’ Earthquake Resistance Capabilities” and “The Revised Seismic Building Code In Taiwan” promulgated by the Executive Yuan, the Department shall conduct basic assessment and investigation of various school buildings’ earthquake resistance, initial assessment, detailed assessment, and relevant reparation/reinforcement constructions in order to achieve full compliance to existing regulations. The Department has drafted a 5-year mid-term plan (spanning from 2009 through 2013) along with a budget to perform the assessment of 328 school buildings along with another 10-year long-term project (from 2009 through 2018) and an incremental budget over the period to repair/reinforce 364 buildings in order to improve the quality of Taipei City’s campus environments.
4. Set up standards governing the appraisal of the acquisition of reserved land by new schools for the reference of policy administrators
Through analysis of the relevant regulations and reviews on school establishment standards, conduct an overall review on the demand for and development benefits of reserved school lands according to the actual population of enrolled students and the scope of services. Set up the standards for land utilization evaluation to offer important basis for decision makers with respect to setting up new schools.
5. Process compensation claims for acquisition of school land and demolition costs associated with expansion projects to enable timely acquisition of the school land
Draw out the budget for compensation claims according to the annual plan and formulate a detailed plan on relocation arrangements and social surveys. Make public demolition announcement and set up an inter-divisional taskforce to oversee the demolition projects including surveys, data collection and documentation, conducting information sessions, audit the relevant documents and household registration data, compile a list of legal or illegal buildings, conduct appraisal, measurement of old buildings and process compensation claims to ensure timely acquisition of the land.
6. Implement the expropriation of listed dormitories/staff family hostels for various schools
All listed school dormitories or hostels built within school perimeters shall be included in the scope of overall campus planning. The same is true for existing staff family hostels that are located in designated commercial zones/expensive residential areas in the urban planning project. In accordance with the “Autonomous Regulations Governing the Management of Municipal Owned Staff Family Hostels/Land in Taipei City” and “Supplementary Regulations Governing the Management of Municipal Owned Dormitories/Staff Family Hostels in Taipei City” to actively expropriate existing dormitories for effective utilization or demolishment for reuse.
7. Organize professional seminars for facility/asset management staff to effectively improve their asset management/construction implementation performance
Conduct seminars on the Government Procurement Act to enhance general administrative staffs’ regulatory competency. The Department has completed compilation of the “Construction Procedures Manual”, “Construction Surplus Disposal Procedures Manual”, “Labor Affairs Procurement, Architect Recruitment, and Blacklisting Inappropriate Suppliers Procedure Manual”, “Bidding, Bid Reviewing, Bid Awarding, and Contract Management with Cases of Erroneous Purchase Procedure Manual” and others (9 manuals in total) to enhance project administrative staffs’ basic knowledge on planning, design, supervision, and management procedures pertaining to construction projects. In addition, in order to facilitate the asset management operations for schools and social education organizations, the Department shall offer practical training courses on the management of municipal asset regulations to improve staff’s knowledge in asset management.

●Future Prospects

1. Improve school facility and offer a comfortable environment by upgrading old school buildings and renovating selective old facilities. Set aside a generous budget for acquisition of additional facility.
2. Enhance campus safety facilities and create a safe learning environment. Effectively improve safety infrastructure projects of all municipal schools and organizations to ensure campus safety and fully realize the city’s mission of improving public safety.
3. Improve the professional competency of general administrative staffs by offering continuing education programs. Organize regular seminars on construction, procurement and engineering regulations on an annual basis. Effectively carry out the function of the director of schools’ general affairs office to educate base-level employees on the relevant laws and regulations.
4. Incorporate existing schemes of operation to select common, yearly constructions (such as washroom renovation, rooftop leakage prevention and so forth) based on the nature of construction through a district/group division mode. This enables the sharing and heritage of experiences amongst teams and relevant contracted works at various schools to strengthen horizontal connection amongst schools. The goal is to achieve seamless and effective functional support on top of establishing basic construction regulations and guidelines.
5. Continue to put in place new standards, rules and blueprint for new construction or renovation projects for schools and organizations to refer to.
6. Set up a school construction project and property management system to effectively control the basic details of the various construction projects. The database shall store information such as land title registration, construction items and unit price data. Set up standard processing procedures to enable users to obtain the relevant details in a timely manner. Effectively control details of school construction projects while at the same time offering management services.
7. In order to improve the utilization of idle campus space managed by schools, the Department shall draft relevant operation procedures based on the “Procedure Governing the Utilization of Municipal Owned Building in Taipei City” to provide a valid reference for schools in management.
8. In order to strengthen the management of government-owned buildings to promote effective land utilization, the Department shall implement and supervise all public assets under the possession of affiliated schools/social education organizations to effective eliminate unauthorized use.
9. In light of the changes in social structure and requirements in educational policies, the Department shall engage in the revision of urban planning for lands designated to schools without demands for additional campuses while taking an active stance in the maintenance and management of designated sites for schools without plans for expansion in the near future for the purpose of official use.