HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The Guam International Airport Authority board approved a modification to a work order for the design of the facility’s roof replacement and renewable energy project so that funds from the Federal Aviation Administration can be maximized.
“The project involves roof replacement … for the entire terminal roof as well as providing approximately 1.6 (megawatts) of renewable energy under a solar panel concept,” airport consultant Frank Santos told the board.
The process will involve the brackets for the solar panels to be installed, followed by the roof membrane. Then a subsequent grant from the FAA will pay for the solar panels.
The project’s design was initially awarded to Evangelista-Acabado Engineers Inc., a civil and structural engineering service, for $2.9 million, but according to Santos, the contract needed to be modified as the work had to be broken down into phases to match funding.
“Our application to the FAA is under the bipartisan infrastructure law. … It’s a very competitive grant, a billion dollars a year they provide to all the airports. So we submitted our application for the entire project to the tune of $42 million dollars. The Western Pacific region, which is where we fall under for small-hub/non-hub airports, they were allocated $40 million for those airports so we already exceeded it by $2 million. Although they are still going to bat for us, they requested from headquarters approximately $27.2 million,” Santos said.
But the money won’t be available all at once, and at this time the $27 million is not a guarantee.
“It still needs to be approved by headquarters in Washington. So we broke the project down into phases. Right now it’s into six phases,” Santos said.
GIAA’s third-floor international arrivals corridor terminal building may seem like a single building, but Santos said it’s actually nine separate buildings structurally.
“Each phase has to be a usable unit. In other words, you have to be able to use it as a phase, so each of the six phases is like a separate bid package on its own. So, the designer needs to develop the specifications for each portion of the terminal roof as well as drawing for each section of the terminal roof,” Santos said.
In order to proceed with the design work, Santos requested that the board modify Evangelista-Acabado Engineers Inc.’s contract to $233,100, which will be funded by the FAA.
The board subsequently approved the request.
The A.B. Won Pat International Airport on Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023, in Tiyan.
