INTEGRITY and trust. They, plus professionalism, are key to what's bringing a high quality Hawaii Convention Center to completion on budget and ahead of schedule. Convention center
builders stay on trackOne morning in February 1994 three men and a few aides visited over coffee and doughnuts in the Seattle offices of LMN, a major designer of convention centers. "I feel comfortable. Do we have a deal?" asked Keith Henrickson of PCL Construction Services in Bellevue, Wash., one of the largest construction firms in the U.S.
Don Goo, chairman of the Honolulu design firm of WAT&G, was startled. This meeting that he had helped put together was about to conclude unbelievably favorably and quickly. Goo gulped and joined in handshakes with Henrickson of PCL and George Loschky, the lead partner of LMN.
The secret behind the quick agreement to team up to bid for a risky $200 million project, Goo said this month, is that "we all felt a degree of respect and trust." They each represented firms with good track records. A co-secret is that PCL was big enough and strong enough economically to be willing to assume most of the risk.
The Hawaii Convention Center Authority plan, quite new to Hawaii, was that consortiums of bidders would deliver finished package proposals to it and promise to finish work in three years for a pre-set price of $200 million. The four consortiums that survived preliminary screening invested a non-refundable several million dollars each just to be considered. The package plan has speeded the center's completion by at least a year. It shifts the financial risk to the successful bid team.
The Seattle Three had no time to waste. Preliminary proposals were due in May, just three months away. The finalists' submission deadline was three months after that, August. The proposal that grew from the Seattle meeting was the unanimous choice of two separate panels of evaluators. It led also in public judging of four models. The contract was awarded to them in November 1994. The center should be completed and turned over to the state several weeks early, in October.
The structure at Waikiki's entrance now looms large and keeps looking better as greenery is added, but Goo says don't judge it yet.
The finish of the front entrance "is just going to be spectacular," particularly at night, he says. Under the sails and steel framework now in place, palm trees will be added. Visible through them will be a colorful Hawaiian mural 90 feet long and 15 feet high.
A centerpiece will be an eye-catching 12-foot Hawaiian bronze sculpture.
To traffic jam worriers there is reassurance from Alan S. Hayashi, executive director of the convention center authority, that three top-flight engineering firms think the flow can be smooth for all except the very biggest conventions. Hayashi adds another trustworthy personality to the equation. Under him, a state contract management team monitors construction constantly on behalf of us, the taxpayers. All problems so far have been smoothed out without major confrontations, Hayashi says.
The $4 million for monitoring is part of an overall $350 million budget that included $130 million to buy the site, $200 million to build and the rest to furnish the center and make sure it is right.
FOLLOWING the February 1994 handshakes Henrickson, Loschky and Goo hurriedly assembled more than two dozen more firms to contribute additional expertise. PCL took on Nordic Construction of Honolulu as its local construction partner. WAT&G had the assignment of making the center unlike any other by integrating outdoor Hawaiian flavor into the basic design. This proved to be crucial in winning the competition.
I'm boggle-eyed that this immensely detailed, complicated submission embraced in many printed volumes was only a dream in the minds of the Seattle Three six months before their final bid. Hawaii is going to be proud of the result.