Last week’s 2010 McGraw-Hill Construction Outlook, offered a fascinating status report on the impact on the $130 billion (Yes, that’s billion with a “b”) in funding earmarked for the construction industry by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Funds have been slow to hit the construction market, but some savvy contractors have been ready with “shovel-ready” projects, particularly in highway construction and road resurfacing.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of ARRA funds will be the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees the business of the U.S. federal government, including the construction and maintenance of millions of square feet of office space and other facilities and resources for different departments of the federal government. The GSA is scheduled to get $5.6 billion in ARRA funding, including $4.5 billion for energy-efficient upgrades of government buildings.
Some of these jobs are truly massive. According to an article in Engineering-News Record magazine, the largest stimulus-funded project to date is a $435.4 million design-build contract for the new U.S. Coast Guard headquarters building in Washington, D.C. The article said the project will include a 1.2 million-square-foot building, a 1,000-car parking garage and will be submitted for a LEED Silver rating. Funding for the project includes $162 million in ARRA dollars. The job broke ground last month and is scheduled to be completed in 2013.
WDG Architecture, Washington, D.C., is the architect of record for the project. John Low, principal, and a speaker at the McGraw-Hill Construction conference, said that as this project gets rolling an estimated 1,100 construction workers will be on-site and 100 subcontractors and vendors will be working on the project. The project broke ground last month at the former site of the St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (previously a mental institution) on the banks of the Anacostia River. The Coast Guard headquarters mentioned earlier is only part of a much bigger construction project – the new 4.5 million-square-foot Homeland Security campus.
Some of these jobs are trickling down to the electrical market. For instance, Dixie Electric Supply, Meridian, Miss., was awarded a $318,080 contract on Sept. 30 to provide r miscellaneous electrical supplies to the US Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg, Miss., and Double R Construction, Kingston Springs, Tenn., was awarded a $3,465,613 contract on Oct. 8 to replace an electrical subsystem at the Alvin C York Veterans Medical Center in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Companies interested in these ARRA contracts should check out these websites: www.recovery.gov; www.fbo.gov.
Some of the jobs tied into ARRA stimulus funds currently posted for electrical contractors at www.fbo.gov, (Federal Business Opportunities) include an electrical retrofit of the U.S. Army barracks in Carlisle, Pa.; the replacement of switchgear, switchboard, and associated lighting contactors, control cabinets, motor control centers, associated controls, feeders and conduits at the Table Rock Lake, Bull Shoals Lake, and Norfork Lake Dams in Arkansas; and a switchgear replacement job at Mississippi State University.
The GSA won’t be the only government agency with billions in ARRA funds to spend. The Department of Energy will have $36.7 billion in ARRA funds to distribute. Of those funds, the biggest impact on the electrical market would seem to be the $16.8 billion targeted for energy efficiency and renewable energy and the $14.5 billion for electricity delivery and energy reliability. – Jim Lucy