The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit has encountered other complications in its dealings with Hawaiian Electric Co., beyond the 50-foot clearance requirement:
>> HECO’s union contract with its employees does not meet the requirements of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires that laborers and mechanics on federally funded construction projects must be paid the prevailing local wage. However, to date HECO has continued to use its own wage scale, according to the Jacobs report.
The utility asked the U.S. Department of Labor to accept the wages it pays as allowable under the Davis-Bacon requirements, but the Labor Department denied HECO’s request and the issue is being appealed.
Consultant Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. said in its report that “HART may have to pay for HECO prevailing wages if the appeal is denied by DOL.” The rail authority did not budget for that cost, and it is unclear whether HART could be required to provide back pay for work that has already been done by HECO employees, according to the report.
>> The contractors that HECO uses for utility relocation work are sometimes deployed to the neighbor islands, which means they may be unavailable to quickly complete required work on the rail project, according to HART’s monthly report for October.
“Resources to relocate HECO facilities are not readily available to resolve utility conflicts,” HART explained in its monthly report. “This has had an impact on cost and schedule.”
The rail authority proposes in that report to seek a commitment from HECO management “to dedicate adequate resources for relocation work, design work to ensure opening.”
HECO spokesman Darren Pai disagreed that the utility has not been putting enough resources into the rail project. “Regarding resources, we have allocated sufficient resources to work with HART on these efforts and are, in fact, currently ahead of HART’s guideway construction schedule,” Pai said in a statement.
