The city’s critically important effort to launch a public-private partnership to complete the Honolulu rail project is running nearly four months behind the schedule mapped out by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation last year, but the head of the rail authority says the effort is still on track.

The so-called P3 contract is expected to be the largest in city history, and last month the city announced it had delayed the next major deadline in the solicitation until April 12. The original deadline for that step, which involves having potential bidders submit their qualifications to HART and the city, was Dec. 21.

The city also has delayed the projected date for awarding the huge P3 contract from Sept. 30 to Oct. 30.

The consultants who are overseeing development of the Honolulu rail line on behalf of the Federal Transit Administration have repeatedly expressed concern about delays in awarding the contract for that last segment of rail through the city center, warning that continued slippage in the schedule will force delays in opening the 20-mile line.

Hill International Inc., which oversees the rail project for the FTA, has warned that the city has only about a year of “float” time, or schedule cushion, to accommodate delays if HART is to meet its goal of opening the 20-mile line by its target date of December 2025.

According to Hill, the city used up about 50 days of that cushion last year as it sought approval from the HART board of directors for the new P3 procurement strategy. HART hopes to make up that time later in the process.

The first part of the two-step P3 solicitation requires that all interested companies submit their qualifications so a panel made up of HART and city officials can select the top three candidates, who will then advance into the second phase of the request-for-proposals process.

HART CEO Andrew Robbins said “more than one” potential bidder asked the city for extra time to prepare presentations of its qualifications, and “we’re trying to maximize competition here, so whenever possible, we try to accommodate the potential bidders.”

“The key thing is, we have enough room in our overall schedule that it’s not going to affect our projected opening of December 2025,” he said. “Bottom line is, these are intermediate dates, and it’s very common in these kinds of processes that they have to move a little bit.”

The city and HART also delayed release of the second phase of the request for proposals. The plan now is to issue the Phase 2 RFP to the top three P3 competitors on May 3; the original deadline was Jan. 25.

HART has earmarked $1 million that will be paid to the unsuccessful P3 bidders to compensate them for some of their costs of preparing proposals, a step Robbins has said is also designed to encourage competition. “It’s meant to partially compensate them,” he said. “These kinds of bids can be in the millions of dollars” to prepare.

However, Robbins said some of the potential bidders have asked the city to increase that amount, and the city is considering that request.

The city center portion of the rail line is the most complex and difficult piece of the project, and awarding a contract for it has been delayed for years.

HART originally solicited proposals for developing the city center portion of the rail line in 2015, but canceled that procurement in August 2017 after the project ran short of funding and encountered other problems. State lawmakers then approved a $2.4 billion financial bailout of the rail project later that year.

Last fall the HART board approved the new P3 plan to restart the solicitation to find a developer to build the 4.16 miles of rail line and eight stations from Middle Street to Ala Moana Center. That new plan also would require the developer to build a 1,600-stall parking garage and transit center at Pearl Highlands.

The construction component of the P3 contract alone is expected to cost the city about $1.4 billion, which would be financed by the contractor. The contractor also would be tasked with operating and maintaining the entire 20-mile rail line for 30 years at a cost to the city of between $127 million and $144 million per year.

Those operating costs will eventually amount to billions of dollars over the life of the contract, but the city has not yet identified exactly where that money will come from.

The P3 procurement process itself will be extremely complicated, and the decision to switch from a more traditional design-build construction strategy to a P3 contract in the middle of the project is “unique to HART,” according to the rail authority.

That is mostly because the project is nearly half built, and the P3 strategy is generally adopted at the outset.

In 2012 the city projected the entire rail line would be open by next year, but that schedule proved to be far off the mark. The FTA’s consultant now calculates there is only a 65 percent chance the project will be completed by September 2026.