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The beleaguered State Historic Preservation Division says it has hired staff and met other federal requirements necessary to keep a critical certification and hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding.

The state agency had been given two years by the federal government to improve its operation and make sure it can effectively carry out its mission of protecting Hawaii’s historic and archaeological resources. That deadline was up this month.

In a new to the National Park Service, which certifies the state agency, SHPD says it met all of the NPS’ requirements, including hiring critical staff and developing a state plan.

But it will be up to the park service to decide. The federal agency will spend the next few months reviewing SHPD’s progress and is expected to make a final determination in February.

At stake is half of SHPD’s budget — $500,000 in federal funds, and an equal amount of state matching funds. If the agency loses its certification it could delay billions of dollars of projects in the state.

Any project in Hawaii that involves federal funding, permitting or licensing must be reviewed by SHPD. This includes some private developments, transportation projects, such as highways and airports, and the $5.26 billion Honolulu rail project, as well as military and Department of Defense projects.

SHPD has a long history of dysfunction, including high staff turnover and permit backlogs. As of May, the agency had about 400 permits that needed to be processed but lacked sufficient staff to carry out the work.

The agency has also been under fire for allowing construction projects to begin without first requiring developers to conduct a full archaeological inventory survey designed to identify Native Hawaiian burial remains. In August, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the agency violated its own rules in allowing construction to begin on the rail project without conducting a full survey. Construction has since stopped on the project and delays are expected to cost the city as much as $95 million.

In a report issued in April, the National Park Service said that while SHPD had made substantial strides in some areas, it was failing to make adequate progress in key areas of its corrective action plan. The NPS said SHPD could lose its federal certification.

Now, SHPD says it met the required benchmarks as of early October, and it hopes that the NPS will agree.

“In sum, with the exception of three hires, whose delay has been approved by the (National Park Service), all requirements of the (corrective action plan) have been met,” according to the report. “Several items in the (corrective action plan) envisioned long-term solutions and for those items plans are in place outlining how SHPD will move forward.”

SHPD’s report notes that it has successfully developed standardized procedures for managing caseloads, has developed a Historic Preservation State Plan and hired adequate staff. The agency also said that it was moving forward on efforts to make certain databases available online for the public.

The agency does have some leeway as to the early October deadline. The NPS has provided an extension for three of the unfilled positions, according to the report.

Hiring has been one of the major issues for SHPD, which needed to fill 10 key positions to be in compliance with the corrective action plan. The agency has successfully hired four archaeologists and a computer data specialist, according the report. It has received extensions for three other positions. But two required positions — a Maui archaeologist and an IT specialist — remain vacant with no apparent deadline extension. SHPD began advertising for the IT specialist position in September. The agency said in its report that it had been unable to attract qualified candidates for the archaeologist position.

Pua Aiu, director of SHPD, said she was in meetings and couldn’t be available for an interview. She said through a spokeswoman that while the park service had not provided an extension for filling these positions, officials were aware that “we are working on this one.”

The park service didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.

While SHPD says that it has made adequate progress to keep its certification, including substantially depleting a backlog of hundreds of permits, it notes that there are a host of areas where it still needs to improve.

For instance, its inventory of state historic properties remains in paper files. The NPS required that the agency make the files available to the public, ideally in an online format. But SHPD has struggled to digitize its records. To view them, the public must travel to SHPD’s Kapolei office.

However, the report notes that with the help of a park service employee, SHPD was moving “forward at lightning speed” to create electronic records.