At long last, the folks tasked with receiving emergency response calls, monitoring traffic and disasters and related duties will be housed under one roof in the $53.6 million Joint Traffic Management Center on Alapai Street, which was dedicated Thursday.

Among the operations expected to be housed at the state-of-the-art, three-story structure — 911 operators and dispatchers from city Police, Fire and Emergency Services departments, as well as state and city transportation officials, including traffic camera operators. Bus and rail operations staff also will be on hand.

“Any incident is going to be immediately recognized at this location, and because of the fact that we have both city and state and other departments here, we’ll be able to respond more quickly with the right kind of personnel with the right kind of vehicles in a very timely manner,” said city Transportation Services Director Wes Frysztacki. “As you know, whenever there’s a pileup … seconds save lives, and we believe this facility will save a lot of lives.”

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said that when there’s a potential traffic tie-up, traffic management employees can adjust traffic signals and advise motorists to travel different routes via social media.

Ocean Safety, Emergency Medical Serv­ices and Fire dispatch will be moving in Monday with HPD dispatch and DTS also settling in by the end of the month. State DOT personnel are expected to be in place by mid-February.

The JTMC structure was completed years behind schedule, and at one point “the project was on life support,” Caldwell said. But the project’s price tag has stayed under budget because the delays and other glitches were determined to be the fault of the contractor, which absorbed the costs on its end. The federal government covered about $37.8 million of the bill.

Discussion about the center began under former Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s administration some 15 years ago.

In 2012 the $25 million, five-story Alapai Transit Center on the Diamond Head (east) end of the JTMC was completed with a traditional bus depot on the ground level and the 411-stall JTMC parking structure above it. With city employee parking an ongoing issue, the sight of a new and mostly unused parking structure instantly sparked discussion over who, or whether anyone, should be allowed to park there until the JTMC was completed. Because federal dollars were used, U.S. Department of Transportation officials were reluctant to allow nontransit employees to park there until former city Transportation Serv­ices Director Mike Formby worked out an agreement.

The city broke ground on the JTMC facility in April 2015. The original completion date was June 2017. But in February 2018 the city issued a notice of default to contractor Watts Constructors LLC, citing numerous deficiencies including incorrect installation of the roofing and the weather-resistant barrier behind the exterior metal panels, each of which may have contributed to water infiltration into the interior of the building, as well as incorrect installation of lobby glass walls assembly and the parapet walls.

In August 2018 the city announced it was lifting its termination notice and allowing the contractor to finish. Watts officials said then that it anticipated project completion by the first quarter of 2019.

Caldwell said the contractor “had other major projects and (was) trying to balance the demand of the other projects, diverting labor and other resources to other projects, and not working as quickly on this project. That’s why I partly thanked our lawyers — they were good at bringing focus back to get them to remind themselves how important this project was, and it worked.”

The mayor pointed out that “the project was on life support” for a time. The city threatened to pull the bond on the contract, which would have resulted in the canceling of the contract and the need to spend additional time procuring a new contractor, adding more delays. “You really don’t want to do that unless you absolutely have to,” Caldwell said. “The good news is they stepped forward and got the job done, but it took some hard work and effort to get there.”

Ty Fukumitsu, DTS Traffic Signals and Technology Division chief, said part of the reason for the last delay was Watts’ decision to bring in an entirely new leadership team to complete the project. “They discovered a lot more issues or challenges than was initially anticipated,” Fukumitsu said. “That’s why it took a little bit longer than we expected, but we have a first-class facility here ready to be operational.”

A future plan calls for construction of a stand-alone Department of Emergency Management emergency operations center that will be housed mauka of the JTMC. Caldwell, whose term ends this year, said he will leave what’s expected to be a $35 million project for his successor.