The board overseeing Oahu’s rail transit project has agreed to nearly $6 million in added costs as it rushes to acquire dozens of properties by the end of 2014 and aims to ensure all of the rail line’s foundations are structurally sound.
Rail board members struggled with but eventually approved an amendment Thursday that would more than double the cost of an existing contract with Huntington Beach, Calif.-based real estate consultant Paragon Partners Ltd.
The move provides for up to $3.3 million to provide three more staffers, four acquisition agents and five relocation agents as rail officials ramp up efforts to secure the 159 or so remaining properties they’ll need by the end of the year to keep construction on schedule. Those added dollars will be covered by rail’s real estate budget — not its contingency, according to a Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation memo.
The real estate fund has the dollars needed to cover those extra costs, HART spokeswoman Jeanne Mariani-Belding said.
Board members called the amount "shocking" and "startling," but they added that they couldn’t immediately determine whether the amount was excessive.
"What concerns me is this contractor … that maybe they’ve taken advantage of our compromised position," HART board Chairman Ivan Lui-Kwan said Thursday, expressing concerns over the added labor costs.
HART staff said the contract increase was necessary if they’ll have any chance to complete some 18 months’ worth of property acquisition work in the next five months.
A 13-month legal battle in federal court over the 20-mile, 21-station project along Oahu’s South Shore prevented rail officials from pursuing all the full or partial properties needed to extend the rail line into town, where trains will deliver passengers as far as Ala Moana Center.
"We believe we can do this with this increase in staff," Planning and Right-of-Way Director Elizabeth Scanlon told the board Thursday. "We are going to scrutinize every dollar," and HART will be in "constant communication" with Paragon to try to keep costs in check, she added.
The board further approved $2.65 million in what construction officials described as greater quality assurance measures to make sure the column foundations that will hold up the rail guideway are sound.
Those measures "should have been included" in rail’s 2009 construction contract with Kiewit Infrastructure West to build the first leg in West Oahu, but city officials instead relied on industry standards, HART Director for Engineering and Construction Lorenzo Garrido said.
When George Atta, director of Honolulu’s Planning and Permitting Department and a nonvoting board member, wanted to know why industry standards weren’t enough for the rail project, Garrido explained that the columns’ 8-foot diameter shafts required the higher standard.
The costs, paid with rail’s contingency budget, will ensure that all 800 or so columns are tested with what’s called "crosshole-sonic logging." Rail officials described the process as an "expensive CAT scan" in which probes are lowered into pipes installed in the columns to send waves into the concrete and test for air pockets that might need to be filled.
Kiewit has already used those standards on the existing columns, but the firm and the city couldn’t agree on a "fair and reasonable price" until now, Garrido said.
The costs will also pay for "cleaning" work that leaves the holes where the column shafts are placed smoother and more level for more stability, Garrido said.
