Despite holding monthly sessions on the best ways to keep costs from getting out of hand, the third-party contractor monitoring Honolulu’s public rail transit project says that it’s seeing "minimal" cost containment and calls the trend "alarming."
The comments were part of the latest report on rail issued by Jacobs Engineering Group. The firm has been rail’s "project management oversight contractor," or PMOC, since 2009, providing independent progress updates to the Federal Transit Administration.
Jacobs’ December 2014 report, made public last week, was the first to be released since rail leaders on Oahu gradually made clear in recent weeks that the 20-mile, 21-station project now faces a budget shortfall of as much as $910 million.
The report raises questions about whether the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, the semiautonomous agency overseeing the largest public works project in Hawaii’s history, has taken sufficient steps to keep costs in check even as rail leaders pledge to pursue such measures going forward.
When HART officials first announced in December that the project faced a significant budget deficit, they unveiled an official 10-point "action plan" to address the situation. HART aims to trim costs with measures such as packaging future work contracts differently.
Meanwhile, in their December report, Jacobs officials write that the firm "has reviewed and discussed the project cost on a monthly basis with HART in an effort to ensure that cost issues are proactively addressed, and PMOC has provided numerous cost mitigations that HART should give consideration to implement."
Since last year, "minimal cost containment measures have been accomplished by HART," the report states. "This unfavorable trend … is alarming."
Jacobs’ monthly PMOC reports are typically blunt in assessing the rail project, particularly when compared with HART’s own monthly reports.
HART Executive Director Dan Grabauskas pushed back against Jacobs’ take in a phone interview Tuesday, saying that HART is already doing what it can to contain costs.
"Their job is to be critical. Their job is to push the project to maintain cost and schedule," Grabauskas said. "Sometime their rhetoric can be a little bit flowery, but I see past that."
The Jacobs report doesn’t go into great detail on the company’s recommendations, but Grabauskas said some of the key cost-cutting measures the firm has suggested include removing the elevated rail project’s backup power system and its platform screen gates at the stations — elements that were added within the past couple of years and items that Grabauskas said local commuters would want while using the system.
"These are mainland people who don’t live here and don’t know we have power outages. We try to describe to them, this is not a ‘nice-to-have,’" Grabauskas said of the backup power system. "There’s no list of cost containment measures that adds up to the $500 (million) to $750 million that we’re now projecting to be behind," he added, referring to the budget deficit but not the full shortfall.
The monthly meetings with Jacobs aren’t open to the public, and Grabauskas said opening up those internal sessions could inhibit the brainstorming that they aim to accomplish.
Amid the concerns over minimal cost containment, Jacobs’ latest report also says to expect future cost increases to activate the system’s traction power substations, which will be used to supply power to rail from the grid.
Those costs weren’t included in the original estimates to complete rail, the report stated.
Grabauskas, who joined HART as executive director in 2012, said he didn’t know why that element wasn’t included, because it predated his tenure. The final costs for that activation will depend on what the agency ultimately negotiates with Hawaiian Electric Industries, he added.
The Jacobs report further states that construction on the Kamehameha Highway stretch of the rail guideway is seven months behind schedule, and three months behind schedule for the westernmost West Oahu-Farrington Highway stretch of guideway.
That’s based on a revised schedule after the delays that the project faced due to legal challenges, Grabauskas said Tuesday.
The final point in HART’s December action plan to address its looming budget deficit was to "discuss" the "possible" extension of the general excise tax surcharge funding the rail project.
In the subsequent weeks since that plan was released, rail officials have urgently pursued that final point, however, calling it critical to rail’s success. Addressing skeptical state lawmakers last month, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said rail would be "severely challenged" without the extension of that 0.5 percent surcharge but stopped short of saying that construction would halt.
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On the Net:
» Jacobs Engineering Group’s latest report on HART’s status is available online, www.honolulutransit.org/document-library/fta.aspx.
