For Bill Sharp of Moiliili, the entire episode was a head scratcher.

"I mean it just makes so much sense," Sharp told KITV4. "You put in the pipe, and then the road."

Sharp was left dumbstruck when Kamoku Street, just outside his apartment at Iolani Court Plaza, was completely refurbished in July, only to be dug up about a week later by a contractor working on a sewer project.

"Does the cart pull the horse, or does the horse pull the cart," said Sharp. "They should have put in this pipe when the road was still in bad condition and then repaved it."

However, the city claims there's not much that could have been done to prevent the freshly laid pavement on Kamoku Street from being torn up.

Lori Kahikina, the director of the city's Department of Design and Construction, explains utility clearances for Kamoku Street were done one to two years before a sewer project on nearby Date Street was awarded to a contractor.

"Once the contractor is selected, it's his means and methods to determine how he's going to divert the existing sewer flow," said Lori Kahikina. "Unfortunately, the bypass is going to be right where we just repaved."

Kahikina believes consulting potential contractors before a sewer or water main project is awarded would be extremely difficult, since each contractor may have a different method of doing the required work.

"It could be 20 different contractors coming in, and they're going to have 20 different means and methods on how they're going to do this," she said. "So, we really couldn't predict in accuracy how (a contractor) was going to address it."

The city is also reluctant to specify which specific streets a contractor can excavate for certain projects, since it could result in expensive liabilities such as change orders.