Dive Brief:
- If at first you don’t succeed, submit your bid again. That’s what Los Angeles-based Tutor Perini did to ultimately win a $1.66 billion contract from the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, which shelved the project four years ago amid budget shortfalls and initial bids that came in too high during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Tutor Perini announced Aug. 15 that HART awarded it the contract for the City Center Guideway and Stations project in Honolulu, Segment 3 of the agency’s broader, approximately $10 billion elevated Skyline light rail initiative. Ron Tutor, the firm’s chairman and CEO, had said the contractor was resubmitting its bid on an earnings call last year.
- Scope of work under the contract, which Tutor Perini expects to be executed in mid-September, includes design and construction of six stations and approximately 3 miles of elevated rail guideway that will terminate just east of downtown Honolulu. Chantilly, Virginia-based Parsons will serve as the design subcontractor on the job, Tutor Perini said in the news release.
Dive Insight:
This is at least the second go-around on the project for Tutor Perini, which was part of the Imua Transit Honolulu joint venture that submitted a $2.7 billion bid for the job in 2020. Parsons, as well as Granite Construction and Traylor Brothers, comprised the other members of the group at the time.
Now, Tutor Perini and Parson will begin project design immediately after the contract is signed, with construction expected to start in the second half of 2025. The contractor estimated the project will reach substantial completion in 2030.
On its project website, HART said that utility relocation work for Segment 3 on the project had already started in the downtown Honolulu area.
As part of those efforts, HART decided in 2021 to shift a portion of the alignment to the “mauka,” or mountain, side of the corridor. Referred to as the “Makua Shift,” this approach will significantly reduce the amount of utilities that need to be relocated, while shortening the construction timeline, the agency said.
On Segment 2 of the Skyline project, utility relocation resulted in expensive construction delays. A Shimmick/Traylor/Granite joint venture sued HART last year for $99 million and eventually reached a $60 million settlement with the agency. Completion on that segment is now slated for 2025.
A history of delays
Tokyo-based Hitachi Rail Honolulu JV initially broke ground in 2011 on Segment 1 of the Skyline project, which included 11 miles of guideway and nine stations. That segment opened in 2023.
Beset by numerous delays and cost hikes — including 56 change orders to the contract for Segment 2, according to Honolulu Civil Beat — the 18.9-mile, 19-station Skyline project was originally supposed to be completed in 2020 at a total cost of $3 billion.
Due to cost overruns, HART has had to submit at least six recovery plans to the Federal Transit Administration to explain how it would finish the project given cost escalations. Indeed, the New York Times characterized it as one of the most expensive transportation efforts in the U.S.
According to HART, this contract will trigger the release of the next $250 million in federal funding under the project’s amended Full Funding Grant Agreement, executed on Feb. 2. HART has previously received approximately $931 million dollars under this grant.
Tutor, who has made a point on the firm’s earnings calls to highlight multiple instances where projects were pulled or paused after the company had submitted the low bid, said the firm is ready to get to work on Segment 3.
“Tutor Perini has a long and successful history of building large, complex light rail projects in various cities in the United States, and we look forward to partnering with HART to see this project successfully delivered,” Tutor said in the release.
