If you’ve logged many domestic air miles recently, it probably seems like most of the airports you visit are loaded with “Pardon Our Appearance” signs, construction cranes, and orange traffic cones. That’s because much of the current airport infrastructure in the United States is badly in need of a face-lift. According to one estimate in Architectural Record magazine, the average airport terminal building is more than 40 years old.
The amount of public and private funds being spent on airport renovation and new construction is truly staggering. The Airport Construction Council estimates that from 2017 to 2022 at least $70 billion will be spent modernizing 50 large or medium-sized airport terminals. While the air passenger terminal data in the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly Value of New Construction report shows a -3.4% year-over-year (YOY) decline in construction to $11.8 billion (seasonally adjusted annual rate) through July, there’s still a mountain of opportunity in this construction niche.
Electrical Marketing newsletter’s Construction Project Database found evidence of even more spending. The 30-plus airport projects either underway or on the drawing board listed in the Table total close to $90 billion in spending. When you figure electrical work accounts for roughly 10% of the typical nonresidential construction project, there’s plenty of opportunity in airport construction for electrical designers, contractors, distributors, independent reps, manufacturers, and others in the supply and construction markets.
In addition to requiring a relatively standard package of electrical construction products, airport construction projects require high-end security and camera systems, backup power equipment, control systems for baggage handling and airport gates, runway lighting, beacons, signaling equipment, signage, and safety systems.
Airport construction projects can range in size from a comparatively small $200-million rental car and parking facility to the truly mammoth multi-billion dollar undertakings. The modernization of the JFK International Airport under discussion in New York, for example, is expected to cost at least $13 billion, and the various upgrades now underway and planned for Los Angeles’ LAX Airport come with an estimated $14-billion price tag. There’s a $8.5-billion modernization project for Chicago’s O’Hare Airport; a multibillion project underway at the Big Apple’s LaGuardia Airport; and
$6 billion in construction underway at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Even a comparatively small project like Kansas City’s new airport, which will replace three aging terminal buildings with a single one, will cost at least $1.3 billion.
While the mega-billion construction projects are at the largest metropolitan airports, dozens of the nation’s smaller airports are enjoying a cash infusion from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for work involving terminal buildings, runways, and taxiways that will be of interest to electrical design firms, electrical contractors, and other electrical professionals. The FAA’s Airport Improvement Program (AIP) is providing $3.18 billion in grant funding for airports across the United States. The FAA says there are 3,332 airports in the United States, and that 432 AIP grants will fund infrastructure projects at 381 of these facilities. You can find out if the FAA is funding any construction projects at airports in your area at www.faa.gov through a 39-page document called the “FAA Airport Improvement Program Grant Detail Report.” FAA’s AIP program is funding lighting for runways and taxiways in dozens of airports around the United States. Case in point: The Memphis International Airport received a grant for $11.3 million for an electrical infrastructure upgrade that’s part of a terminal building upgrade.
According to the press release announcing the AIP program, “Selected projects include runway reconstruction and rehabilitation, construction of firefighting facilities, and the maintenance of taxiways, aprons and terminals. The construction and equipment supported by this funding increase the airports’ safety, emergency response capabilities, and capacity, and could support further economic growth and development within each airport’s region.”
A new force in the airport construction market is Amazon Prime Air, due to the company’s expanding network of air cargo facilities. Amazon is expanding a facility at the Dallas-Fort Worth market’s Alliance Airport. That facility recently received a $5.5-million AIP grant for a new taxiway that will in part be used by Amazon Prime aircraft, according to a post at www.keranews.org. Amazon also broke ground earlier this year on a $1.5-billion cargo hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The Dayton Business Journal says the company now operates out of 20 airports in the United States.
While the level of construction contract awards for airport work rises and falls with the mega-billion projects, all signs point to a steady flow of opportunities for the electrical construction industry in the coming years.
