Hawaii contractors hear about new projects - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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The projects involve billions of dollars and thousands of jobsfor Hawaii. The largest of them woulde be the City and Countyof Honolulu’sd proposed rail transit project, which would inject $5 billion in spendingh and create 11,000 direcrt and indirect jobs over a 10-year buildr out, said Kyle Chock, executive directoe of , which sponsored Tuesday’s PRP is a joint program of the and some 200 unionizerd contractors in Hawaii. More immediate is the money that is supposedx to come from the federal government under PresidentBarack Obama’s stimulus bill.
Hawai is set to get abouf $807 million of the $787 billion in spendinyg authorized bythe legislation, according to the officee of U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, The state initially was supposed to get anestimatesd $717.8 million for formula-based program s alone, but will get an additional $89.4 millio through federal agency projects or through competitivw means, according to figures from Inouye’ds office. The state’s capital improvement program totals about $1.8 billion in projects that are out to bid, alreadh awarded, and under construction, said Russ Saito, directof of the state Department of Accountinbg and General Services.
That figure doesn’t include desigb and planning, which can account for 10 percenty ofthe total, he said. This is the righty time to make an investment inpublivc works, said Brennon Morioka, director of the statew Department of Transportation, which has proposed spending $4 billiohn over six years to upgradse the state’s highways. State lawmakers are consideringt legislation that would raise taxeas and fees byabout $170 per year for the average taxpaye r to finance that project. “When the private sector is weknow we’ll be getting from contractors and vendors, he said.
The Departmenf of Hawaiian Home Lands is working on hundrede of new homes on its landson Maui, Kauai and the Big Island, and has planss for hundreds more over the next 18 months, making it one of the largest residential real estate developers currentlgy in Hawaii, director Micah Kane said. The state Departmeng of Education and the also outlined their planse for construction over the next coupleof years, which include the new UH West Oahu DHHL also is working with the Hawaii Carpenters Union on a pre-apprenticeship program that givews the PRP’s union contractors exclusivity on the department’ss projects and in return enrolls the department’sd Hawaiian beneficiaries in a pre-apprenticeship program that can lead to an apprenticeship with the union.
The first class started in November 2008.