CPA acting Executive Director Ike Perez said a new agreement is expected to be signed by the agency with Thales Inc., the firm that will identify the project’s scope of work.
The initial amount of contract was $380,000 but this was raised to $408,000 and a copy of the new agreement was sent to Thales on Sept. 30, CPA said.
The company is expected to complete the scope of work in four months, but the bidding and awarding process will take a few more months.
“The company’s response to the agreement is expected in the next two weeks and we will forward it to [the Attorney General’s Office] and [the Department of Public Works] for their concurrence,” Perez said.
Until the scope of work is completed, he added, “nobody at this point knows how much the project will cost.”
The installation of an instrument landing system was first proposed since 2006, but it was delayed due to funding issues.
The U.S. Office of Insular Affairs later approved the reprogramming of $3.5 million from Tinian’s wastewater project for the airport’s instrument landing system project.
“The project could be less or more than $3.5 million,” Perez said. “If the funding is not enough, there’s a need to go back to the [feds].”
Perez said that as soon as a contract is awarded, the contractor has 14 months to install the system.
Once built, he added, the system will be inspected by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“An ILS is a complex, technical thing that needs to go into a timeframe. It could be inconceivable for us to bypass any of the schedule of events just to compress time…because we may have problems after the installation,” Perez said.
“We’re expecting the total completion and operation of ILS by the middle part of 2010 based on the schedule,” he added.
