After extensive testimony from industry groups, labor unions and procurement officials, the Senate joint committee voted to pass House Bill 1155 with amendments that sharply limit the bill’s procurement exemptions to a two-year pilot at the Department of Transportation and add reporting and oversight requirements.

DOT representatives told the committee they support limited flexibility for new procurement approaches such as CMGC (construction manager/general contractor), which they said can speed projects and produce design-stage innovation by allowing a contractor to engage early with designers and offer a guaranteed maximum price. Ed Sifay of Hawaii DOT said CMGC can accelerate schedules and lower costs by capturing contractor expertise during design.

Labor and construction-industry groups strongly opposed a broad exemption from the procurement code. Testimony came from the Subcontractors Association (Tim Lyons), the Hawaii Building Construction Trades Council (Gino Suquena), Ironworkers Stabilization Fund (Cody Sula), the Elevator Constructors and other union affiliates. They argued the procurement code provides protections — including retainage and prompt-payment provisions — and urged amending the code rather than creating wide exemptions.

The State Procurement Office (Matthew Chow) said it supports the bill’s intent but asked to work with DOT and industry on precise statutory language. During committee discussion, members pressed DOT and procurement staff on safeguards: how contractors would be selected, whether project management would be excluded from the exemption, and whether existing project labor agreements (PLA) would be affected. DOT representatives said PLAs would not be affected and that the SPO must approve any specific processes in writing.

In response to the testimony, the committee removed the HD1 contents and adopted DOT-proposed language limiting the exemption to DOT, added a two-year sunset for the pilot, required a written report to the Legislature 30 days after the first year of implementation, and added language to prevent use of the exemption for project management procurements (with a statutory definition inserted). The committee chair recommended passage with those amendments; the committee adopted the recommendation, with several senators noting reservations. The recommendation carried and the measure was advanced with the described guardrails.