The board of directors of the Honolulu rail authority granted CEO Andrew Robbins a $10,000 bonus Thursday as part of his evaluation for his first year on the job but declined to give him a pay increase.

Terrence Lee, vice chairman of the board of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, said the decision to forgo a raise should not be interpreted as a lack of confidence in his leadership.

“Because the criteria that we used were heavily performance-based, it came down to the simple fact that certain of those criteria haven’t yet been met,” Lee said.

Robbins’ evaluation, which he agreed to make public, showed he “did a commendable job of getting up-to-speed and taking control of this high-profile, complex program, and had some notable achievements.”

Those accomplishments included launching a new plan to pursue a public- private partnership, or P3 agreement, to complete the last 4.16 miles of rail line and rail stations through the Honolulu city center.

HART is seeking qualified companies to enter into a public-private partnership with the city and expects to award a contract for that work this fall.

The fact that the P3 effort is in its early stages “has a lot to do with where we ended up” on Robbins’ evaluation, Lee said.

HART board Chairman Damien Kim said the board’s evaluation of Robbins was based on his work through September, before the recent publication of state audits and a city audit that were critical of the rail project. Robbins set ambitious goals, “and it did get hampered in there and a lot of it was no fault of his own,” Kim said.

The evaluation says Robbins fell short of the board’s expectations on “external relationships” such as educating the public about using rail and its benefits and costs, and also he relied too heavily on outside consultants without sufficiently scrutinizing their work before it was submitted to the HART board.

Robbins receives a base salary of $316,992 under his current three-year contract, along with a housing allowance of $55,000 per year and a transportation allowance of $7,200 per year.

His contract began in 2017 and is scheduled to expire in September 2020, but Kim said the board intends to extend that agreement by three months so that it would finish at the end of next year.

$160M settlement OK’d

At the same meeting when it released its evaluation of Robbins to the public, the board unanimously approved a $160 million settlement of a claim filed by contractor Ansaldo Honolulu JV in connection with years of delays on the rail project.

Those delays meant Ansaldo has been unable to install the equipment necessary to operate the rail system on the guideway because much of the guideway hasn’t been built yet. That increased costs for Ansaldo, prompting the company to file the delay claim that adds to what was originally a $574 million design-build contract.

Ansaldo was originally supposed to be finished with construction this year, but construction of the elevated rail line is now about six years behind schedule. The city now expects the 20-mile rail line will be finished until late 2025, but even that date is not certain.

The HART board also approved a separate $7.5 million change order for Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co. in connection with delays on what was originally a $79 million contract to construct the Farrington Highway Station Group, which includes the West Loch, Wapahu and Leeward Community College stations.

A number of problems led to the claim. For one, HART issued a notice to proceed for the contract on Aug. 17, 2015, but did not provide drawings until the following February. HART was also 482 days late in providing access to the platform at the college, which delayed construction, according to a summary of the claim provided to the board.

The total cost of the Farrington station contract, including other approved change orders, will now be $90 million, the board was told. The Ansaldo and Hawaiian Dredging issues boost the total rail change orders and delay claims to date to more than $520 million.

The overall price of the project has increased over the past few years to $9.2 billion, including financing costs, from about $5 billion. However, HART officials are quick to point out the latest change orders will be paid out of contingency funding that was budgeted to pay these claims and will not cause the total budget for the project to increase beyond $9.2 billion.

Those cost overrun increases were almost entirely caused by events that played out before Robbins took charge in 2017, and Robbins has said one of his tasks is to “clear out these old issues so that we can more forward with the project.”