Rail officials are proposing a complex change order worth $70 million to $100 million that would expand the amount of work to be done by contractor Shimmick/Traylor/Granite JV, which is now building the rail guideway and stations through the airport area.
The Shimmick joint venture was awarded a contract for nearly $875 million in 2016 to build four rail stations and more than five miles of elevated rail guideway from Aloha Stadium to Middle Street, and that work is now more than half finished.
Now staff with the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation are proposing to expand the scope of the original contract, and briefed members of the rail authority board of directors Thursday on a plan to make Shimmick responsible for building an extra 1,700 feet of rail guideway along Dillingham Boulevard.
Glenn Nohara, chairman of the authority’s Project Oversight Committee, raised concerns during Thursday’s online meeting that the proposed change order may be so substantial that it would alter the parameters of the original contract in a way that might violate state procurement law.
Nohara said the extra guideway and utility work is outside the scope of the original airport guideway contract, and he wants a legal opinion from the city Corporation Counsel, the state chief procurement officer and the Federal Transit Administration that the plan is proper and legal.
“Keep in mind that we’re currently under a federal investigation for our change orders, so we don’t want to add more to that investigation, so we’ve got to be squeaky clean on that,” he said.
The ongoing federal investigation of rail includes the FBI and was first made public more than a year ago. Federal grand jury subpoenas have been issued to current and former HART employees, but it is still unclear exactly what the focus of the investigation may be.
The HART plan would tap Shimmick to extend the guideway an extra one-third of a mile, from an area near the Oahu Community Correctional Center to a point about 350 feet east of Puuhale Road.
“Rail construction, as we know, is essential to the Hawaiian economy,” said John Moore, east area construction manager for HART. “The idea here is to have a project that would be shovel-ready. There would be very little design work required because this is a continuation of what’s already been done for the current 5.2 miles of guideway that’s being constructed as we speak.”
The idea is that Shimmick would also help HART speed up some critically important utility relocation work and in the city center, work that has fallen about seven months behind schedule.
Nan Inc. was hired under a contract worth up to $400 million to handle the utility relocation effort, which involves moving water, sewer and power lines out of the path of the planned rail line through the city. But delays in the utility work prompted HART to announce earlier this year it planned to hire another contractor to speed things up.
HART staff said there are some “very large potential savings” if some of the work involving high-voltage lines is done by Shimmick rather than Nan.
The proposed plan would also shift work that was originally supposed to be included in a planned public-private partnership, or P3 agreement, over to Shimmick to handle.
Procurement is already underway for the P3 contract, which would be the largest in city history and involve an estimated $1.4 billion in construction activity. But the city and HART repeatedly delayed awarding that contract, and announced this week the P3 bidders will not submit their price proposals until July 22 because of new delays linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The idea of shifting some of the P3 work over to Shimmick while the P3 schedule is worked out is that “we’d have shovel-ready work being accomplished. It would benefit the economy and also benefit the program,” Moore said.
HART Executive Director Andrew Robbins was unavailable to discuss the proposed change order Thursday.
