The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation is in the market for a new engineering firm to help oversee the city’s $5.26 billion rail project.

Up until now that company has been Parsons Brinckerhoff, which has $468.7 million worth of contracts on the project.

Parsons Brinckerhoff could still add to that tally should it win the latest bid for engineering services, but nothing is certain at this point.

On Thursday, HART Executive Director and CEO Dan Grabauskas said he couldn’t talk about the specifics of ongoing procurement matters until a new contract is awarded.

He did say that a decision could be made on the new “general engineering consultant” contract as soon as next week and that the price range is expected to be around $50 million.

Should HART select a new firm to take over for Parson Brinckerhoff, Grabauskas said there shouldn’t be any problems with the transition to a new team of engineers.

“They’re all professionals,” Grabauskas said of the firms that have submitted bids.

Parsons Brinckerhoff’s involvement on rail has shrunk over the years from needing hundreds of workers to just around 50, Grabuaskas said. That’s because most of the previous work Parsons Brinckerhoff did can now be done by HART staffers.

“The general engineering consultant really acted as a proxy for our organization before there was an organization,” Grabauskas said, referring to the fact that HART was formed in 2010 and Parsons Brinckerhoff had been working on the project well before then.

“The process I’ve been undertaking is to try to bring some of those tasks (the company has been doing) in house,” he said. “It should save us money because we’re taking things in house.”

Photo: Artist rendering of the inside of a rail station.

—Nick Grube