Kiewit will cover entire cost of replacing faulty rail parts

Kiewit Infrastructure West will cover the cost to replace thousands of plastic pads along rail’s first 11 miles of elevated track, project officials say, after crews discovered that many of those pads were already cracking years before the system starts running.

In September, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation officials briefed the board and the public on the track’s faulty shims, which help give the train tracks a level surface. The problem also affects the track’s isolation pads, which help to contain electrical current. At the time, it wasn’t clear whether taxpayers would have to cover any of the costs.

However, on Friday HART West Construction Manager Kai Nani Kraut said that Kiewit will foot the entire bill. Kiewit representatives directed questions on the matter back to HART.

Kraut said she expects Kiewit will replace 110,000 shims and pads along rail’s first seven miles by mid-March. The company should then have an additional 35,000 isolation pads replaced along rail’s next three miles on Kamehameha Highway by May, she added.

The shims on that three-mile stretch don’t need to be replaced, Kraut said.

Kiewit has given HART the certification and tests showing that its new shims and isolation pads comply with what’s required of the firm under contract, Kraut said. Meanwhile, HART is still working to verify that it agrees with Kiewit on the root cause of the cracking of the original shims and pads, she added.

“We have asked, and they have given us one reason. We feel there may be multiple,” Kraut said Friday. She declined to specify further because HART workers have neither reached their conclusion nor briefed the rail agency’s board yet. She said she did not expect the issue to affect rail’s schedule for train and systems testing.

A separate glitch discovered this fall in the manufacture of the rail’s train cars, however, could delay testing and rail’s planned 2020 interim opening if Hitachi Rail Italy doesn’t come up with a swift solution, project officials say.

Kiewit is almost done building the rail project’s first 11 or so miles of guideway to Aloha Stadium. Rail officials and Kiewit originally opted to use the plastic, narrow shims instead of a “plinth” — essentially an elevated concrete platform — because they estimated it would save more than $7.5 million along that 11-mile stretch, according to a HART presentation.

In addition to the snafus with the shims — as well as issues with the steel tendons that help hold the concrete guideway in place — HART and Kiewit have acrimoniously sparred in private over tens of millions of dollars in change orders, according to former project consultants with knowledge of the situation.

Another firm, Shimmick/Traylor/Granite Joint Venture, has been given the notice to proceed on rail’s next five-mile stretch to Middle Street. Kiewit did not compete for that contract.