A company that was declared in default and removed more than a year ago from a state project to build a new hangar at Honolulu Airport now says it was wrongfully terminated from the job by the state Department of Transportation.
The general contractor, DCK Pacific LLC, issued a statement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser saying the company has not been paid for some of the work it
performed in 2015, adding that “the state’s decision to terminate dck when only a few months remained to complete the work is quite astonishing.”
The company said it worked with the state during a two-year delay in the start of construction and “numerous other issues” that were not the fault of the company.
“The state’s unjustified termination begs the question if dck is now being used as a ‘Scapegoat’ to deflect other Airport expansion issues unbeknownst to dck,” the company statement said.
Department of Transportation Director Ford Fuchigami said last week DCK has been banned from bidding on state DOT projects for two years because the company allegedly defaulted on a $73.43 million contract to construct the new maintenance hangar for Hawaiian Airlines.
Hawaiian Airlines CEO Mark Dunkerley has said the maintenance and cargo facility is the “linchpin” in a series of Honolulu Airport improvements the state has estimated would cost
$739 million, but much of that work cannot proceed until the hangar is finished.
Construction on the hangar and maintenance facility has been at a standstill since DCK was removed as the general contractor on the job in late 2015, and Hawaiian Airlines said delays in the hangar project have contributed to delays in development of a new Mauka Concourse that would add new gates at the crowded airport.
Last month DCK refused to comment on the hangar job, citing ongoing litigation. Lawsuits have been filed by the state and subcontractors against DCK and its bonding company, Terrace Pacific Insurance Ltd.
The company has since changed that stance and issued its statement “because of the negative nature of the latest articles toward dck regarding the HNL Airport Project and the distortion of facts therein.”
The state alleges it paid DCK millions of dollars that were never paid out to subcontractors working on the hangar job, and dozens of the subcontractors claim they were never paid for work they did on the hangar project.
According to a statement filed in court by the Department of Transportation late last year, the state became aware of the problems on the job when “subcontractors were not showing up for work. The state learned the subcontractors’ reticence about coming to the job site stemmed from dck’s failure to pay the subcontractors’ monthly bills.”
In a December letter to DCK, Fuchigami said the company’s failure to pay the subcontractors was “evidence of dck’s adverse financial position which has caused much delay” in the project.
That letter also cited
“failures in contract work performance” by the company, and included a seven-
page list of alleged construction defects.
Last week transportation officials asked state lawmakers for authority to pay out more than $10 million in state special funds to settle claims by subcontractors who allege they were never paid for work they did on the hangar projects.
The company alleged in its statement that it funded a substantial amount of work on the hangar project out of its own pocket. That included money for changes that were authorized by the state but were later “disallowed by the state and their consultants when it was time to pay,” according to the company statement.
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation said the department would have no further comment on the dispute.
