Rapid transit system changes design despite previous funding

HONOLULU (AP) — Honolulu rail officials are having construction firms create their own design plans for the second half of the island’s 20-mile transit project, despite having spent more than $100 million in final design plans.

Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation officials told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (http://bit.ly/1Kli5R3) that the redundancy is due to the ongoing changes in the design and construction approach since the project began.

The private firms that have recently started bidding to build the guideway and stations are now creating their own design plans, which HART officials said will help rein in costs going forward.

“It’s still salvageable, but it would have been a lot better not going so far,” said Rex Huffman, a Florida-based building industry consultant and member of the advocacy group Design-Build Institute of America, of the design work that’s already been done. “It makes no sense. They’re already designed, so what’s the design-builder going to do?”

HART officials said the completed designs will likely be incorporated into the new ones, but that it is unclear how much of the plan will be used to build the actual project.

HART Executive Director Dan Grabauskas said the local business community suggested the switch from a design-bid-build model, in which construction firms bid on a complete design, to a design-build model, in which one company both designs and builds a project.

“The overwhelming response from the business community, the construction community has been, ‘If you give us station and guideway together, and you make it a design-build, which lets us be more creative and work with you on savings, then we prefer that method,’” Grabauskas said.

Using the design-build approach, HART officials estimate it will cost between $1.5 billion and $1.7 billion to build the second half of the transit system.