Ansaldo Honolulu JV, the firm that won the largest contract in state history to deliver rail’s train cars and signaling system, recently understaffed key job positions at a “critical juncture” of the transit project, according to the agency overseeing rail.

The revelation coincides with a separate whistleblower lawsuit filed against Ansaldo earlier this month, in which a former top safety employee for the firm alleges that it cut corners on staffing needed to ensure worker safety.

“The absence of a number of key personnel at this time is unacceptable and inappropriate for a project of this magnitude,” Justin Garrod of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation wrote in a July 15 letter to Ansaldo, in which he flagged about 10 Ansaldo engineer and manager positions. Garrod, HART’s deputy director of Core Systems, monitors Ansaldo for HART. The agency “is concerned that the continued vacancies of key personnel and other important positions are affecting the (rail project’s) progress,” he wrote.

The city in 2011 awarded Ansaldo Honolulu a $1.4 billion contract to design, build, operate and maintain the future transit project’s driverless trains and operating system — what rail officials often refer to as rail’s “brains and the trains.” Garrod’s letter raised concerns about positions essential to designing, building and overseeing rail’s communications and traction systems that are either vacant or are covered by inexperienced staffers and personnel who either are “unavailable” to do the work or have been pulled away to other duties.

This summer rail leaders announced that the 20-mile, 21-station elevated system now faces a delay of at least a year to complete, and they said that some project contractors are at least partially to blame. However, rail officials said Friday that the issues with Ansaldo did not add to those schedule delays.

Ansaldo’s top leader in Honolulu said that the personnel issues flagged by HART have never been a “major issue” and have not “at all” affected the firm’s progress.

All of the positions that HART raised concerns about have been filled except for several field supervisors because that construction work hasn’t started yet, Enrico Fontana, Ansaldo Honolulu’s project manager, said in an email.

As for why the firm appeared to be undermanned in the first place, Fontana wrote that “a project of this magnitude will undergo many shifts in employee staffing requirements over its lifetime. Our nucleus of key personnel has been in place since day one in January 2012.”

“We understand HART’s concerns and have diligently tried to keep them informed of our staffing requirements. HART has come to expect only the best work product from Ansaldo, and we shall continually strive to achieve that goal,” he added.

HART isn’t the only entity to raise recent concerns over Ansaldo’s staffing during rail construction. John McCaughey, who briefly served as Ansaldo’s rail construction safety manager this past summer, filed a whistleblower suit Oct. 1 alleging that the firm violated its contract with the city as well as state safety laws, and that it put its workers at risk of injury and death.

The firm had hired him in May to exclusively oversee safety at its rail construction sites, but once McCaughey took the job, Ansaldo repeatedly tried to pull him away from those duties to help instead with an audit unrelated to the project, according to the court complaint. McCaughey contends the move contradicted what he was hired to do and that it could expose the company to legal action.

“Ansaldo Honolulu is clearly asking me to breach our contract with HART,” he wrote in a July 7 email to an Ansaldo representative, according to his suit. “At this point I feel like I am being pressured out of my position as I can no longer tolerate being even remotely complicit in these unethical activities. Additionally, as a certified safety professional, I have a code of ethics to honor.”

While working at the 43-acre site for rail’s future operations center in Pearl City, McCaughey had already encountered safety-related issues with one of Ansaldo’s contractors, Watts Constructors — and that issue alone would require most of his attention, the suit stated. By stretching his responsibilities beyond the scope of the project, Ansaldo’s actions “could result in injuries and fatalities,” McCaughey further wrote.

According to the suit, he resigned in July rather than risk losing his professional construction safety license should an accident happen during his tenure. McCaughey made about $115,000 a year when he left Ansaldo, according to initial response documents that the firm filed Tuesday.

His suit asserts that Ansaldo violated Hawaii’s Whistleblowers Protection Act because the firm, he argues, compelled him to resign after his repeated attempts to fix the issue with them. It seeks lost pay, attorneys’ fees and damages due to mental anguish.

Representatives for Ansaldo say McCaughey’s lawsuit is meritless. In a statement Wednesday, Jeffrey Harris, a Honolulu- based attorney representing Ansaldo, said that all of the work Ansaldo had assigned McCaughey “was related to the Honolulu rail project.”

“Ansaldo Honolulu JV’s safety record is nearly spotless,” Harris further wrote. “No fatalities, no major injuries, and no time lost for accidents since day one of the project. We had only one minor injury in almost four years.”

Ansaldo has already hired a replacement for McCaughey’s post, he added.

HART, meanwhile said it is “looking into the matter” of McCaughey’s lawsuit.

“At no time has safety been compromised,” HART Executive Director Dan Grabauskas said in an emailed response to questions about Ansaldo’s recent staffing. “We remain confident that Ansaldo will deliver on the terms of its contract. HART will continue to provide the highest level of oversight to ensure that happens.”

In July, Garrod said that HART was concerned about Ansaldo’s construction progress at the Pearl City operations center. A separate firm, Kiewit Kobayashi JV, is constructing the actual buildings that will house Ansaldo’s operations equipment. City officials last week touted the operations center’s near completion, saying the facility is about 80 percent built and hoping that pace can continue for the rest of the project.

This week HART board members are expected to consider, at a fourth consecutive meeting, whether to approve Ansaldo’s nearly $8.7 million delay claim.

HART staff say the claim would cover the approximately nine-month delay in 2012 that barred Ansaldo from starting work, when rival Bombardier challenged the award of that contract in court. However, some board members say there could be an issue over whether Ansaldo followed the proper steps to remain entitled to the claim.