LaGuardia Airport Terminal Wins Inaugural Award from the National Academy of Construction

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s (PANYNJ) Terminal B redevelopment project at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, NY has been awarded the inaugural Recognition of Special Achievement Award by the National Academy of Construction (NAC).

The award is intended to honor the creativity, innovation, vision, and accomplishments of practitioners in the engineering, design, and construction industries. NAC said it created the award to demonstrate “its commitment to build and grow broad public knowledge and support of the industries’ achievements and their effects on the built environment and society.”

STV, in joint venture with Tishman, is performing professional construction management services for the redevelopment of Terminal B under a contract with the PANYNJ.  STV is providing inspection; facility-wide construction and logistical coordination; constructability; commissioning; contract administration; construction cost estimating; change order processing; document management; and BIM (Building Information Modeling) and scheduling services, as well as pre-construction, and permit compliance reviews in support of the entire Terminal B program.

In announcing the award, NAC officials cited several of the $4 billion construction program’s achievements: the ability to maintain full flight operations throughout construction; sustainable practices both during construction and in the ongoing operation of the terminal, including LEED Gold certification; historic community benefits, including more than $2 billion in contracts to minority- and women-owned business enterprises and more than $775 million in contracts to local Queens-based businesses; and hundreds of permanent jobs for local residents.

LaGuardia Terminal B is the first airport terminal in the world to achieve LEED Version 4 Gold certification for sustainability, meeting high standards in the areas of energy efficiency, water conservation, selection of environmentally preferable materials, and waste reduction. Almost 100 percent of the concrete debris from the original Terminal B parking garage was removed during its demolition. It was then recycled and used for new construction, eliminating the equivalent of 250,000 miles of truck traffic on local streets and highways.

The award will be formally presented by the NAC at its meeting in Scottsdale, AZ, on October 7. This is the second award won by Terminal B.  In December 2021 the terminal won UNESCO’s Prix Versailles, the global architecture and design award, for best new airport in the world for 2021. 

An 850,000-square foot, four-story arrivals and departures hall in the new Terminal B opened to the public in June 2020. The terminal has two “island” concourses. Both the eastern and western concourses are connected to the main hall by elevated steel truss pedestrian skybridges, making LaGuardia the first airport in the world with dual pedestrian skybridges. When finished the two concourses will have a total of 35 gates.

Opening in phases, the Terminal B project is now more than 90% complete and is expected to wrap up later in 2022. The Terminal B project is part of a larger, more comprehensive $8 billion effort to transform the airport into a modern, unified facility with improved ground transportation access, additional taxiways and best-in-class passenger amenities, including a new Terminal C operated by Delta Air Lines, which opened last month. STV is serving as the construction management agent for Delta for Terminal C.

Development of Terminal B is a public-private partnership between the PANYNJ and LaGuardia Gateway Partners, which is composed of Vantage Airport Group, Skanska, Meridiam and JLC Infrastructure for development and equity investment. Vantage Airport Group leads the redevelopment program and management of Terminal B, with Skanska Walsh as the design-build joint venture and HOK and WSP USA for design.