A federally mandated blueprint that’s supposed to guide completion of the Honolulu rail transit line hasn’t been updated since 2012 — even though local officials pledged to do so by December 2014.

Rail’s “project management plan” has been flagged as persistently outdated in two separate audits that scrutinized how the island’s over-budget rail project has been managed. Officials this week briefed the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board on efforts to put audit recommendations into practice, as they look to get a better handle on the state’s largest-ever public works project.

HART plans to finally update its project management plan, or PMP, after the Legislature’s special session on rail funding later this summer, Project Director Sam Carnaggio told the board Thursday.

The agency has also revived a “change-control board” of project managers that was disbanded in 2012, to better review mounting change orders for the rail project.

HART says it is further working with the city’s human resources department to address the rail agency’s heavy turnover. Some 80 workers, among HART’s 127 total positions, have left in the past four years, according to Carnaggio.

“That’s a lot,” he told the board at a meeting Thursday.

HART staff said they’ll implement nearly 40 recommendations from the American Public Transportation Association’s January peer review and the city auditor’s 2016 report.

Meanwhile, board members continued to debate whether to conduct a forensic, or “special” audit into steep price hikes and years-long schedule delays for the rail system.

In public testimony, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the project already undergoes extensive auditing and that the board has plenty of expert recommendations for better management. He urged the board to focus on the big picture “instead of fighting about how many audits we need.”

Board member Terrence Lee said another audit could be a waste of time and money but also beneficial if it helped ease public concerns.

However, board member John Henry Felix, who’s advocated a special audit, said its purpose would differ from the reports Caldwell displayed before the board Thursday.

“We have to find out where the money went and why, and not repeat the mistakes of the past,” Felix said. “We have to revisit the past, and that can only be done through a thorough, intensive, specific forensic audit — not a general audit.”

On Thursday, City Councilman Trevor Ozawa introduced Resolution 17-199 requesting that HART conduct an “economy and efficiency” audit on causes of the cost overruns.

Rail’s federal-oversight contractor called for HART to update its PMP in its August 2014 “risk-refresh” report. A month later the rail agency responded that it would have that update done by December 2014, calling the move “essential to delivering the project successfully.”

That update never occurred, however. Within months project leaders were focused on cost overruns that have plagued the project ever since. Today it’s estimated the project faces about a $3 billion budget deficit, including financing.

In its response to concerns over the PMP in the city auditor’s 2016 report, HART said it couldn’t update the plan until it had a better handle on the cost increases and all the restructuring that came with them.

“Staff has been working to update the program plans and keep up with the changes,” the agency wrote in its response.

A letter from John Henry Felix on RAIL by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd