Company Description:

The School Construction Authority (SCA) was established by the New York State Legislature in December 1988 to build new public schools and manage the design, construction and renovation of capital projects in New York City's more than 1,200 public school buildings, half of which were constructed prior to 1949.

In October of 2002, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein announced that changes in the school governance law gave the Mayor the authority to appoint all three Trustees of the SCA, including the School's Chancellor who serves as the SCA Chair, and that the management of the Department of Education's Capital Program has been consolidated under one agency, the SCA. 

Making the SCA completely accountable for the Capital Program had several goals: 

1. To improve management of the construction process,
2. To reduce school construction costs by simplifying design standards, and to
3. Increase competition among contractors.

Substantial progress has been made toward achieving these goals. The SCA is now solely accountable for planning, real estate, and budgeting, as well as the scoping, design and construction of new schools, additions and capital improvements to existing schools. All staff from other divisions of the Department of Education who were involved in capital projects are now located at the SCA. As a result, functions that were once divided between different organizations are now fully integrated.

Design standards for new schools and additions have been modified significantly to reduce building costs and foster competition among contractors. The new standards are more typical of general construction in New York City and are more familiar to contractors and subcontractors. These technical standards, such as Design Requirements and Standard Specifications, are now available to the public in the Architecture and Engineering section under "Doing Business". In addition, the contractor prequalification and change order processes have been streamlined.

All of this has been done with an eye toward facilitating coordination between the public and private sectors and ensuring that NYC's public school children have the facilities necessary to prepare them for the 21st century.​