Shire of Esperance awards $300,000 contract for airport runway upgrade design

The Esperance Airport runway upgrade is one step closer to taking off but the project has proven more complex than initially thought, with the design contract awarded this week about $100,000 more expensive than anticipated. The Shire of Esperance 2023-24 budget dedicated $200,000 to the runway upgrade design but a discussion behind closed doors at Tuesday’s council meeting has resulted in the shire awarding a contract worth about $300,000. Shire president Ron Chambers said the contract recipient — Airport Consultancy Group — would now start design and consultation work to present the shire with options for the new runway. “We’ve looked at doing work on the runway and found out that that needs quite a bit more work on it than what we were initially planning,” he said. “Obviously with that sort of capital and that amount of money that will need to be spent on it, we need to make sure that we’re getting the best bang for the buck and we’re also ... making sure that it’s future-proof. “They will now come back to us with a design and ... there’ll be some consulting and some work done as to what the best design will be. “We’ll also be going out for a business case (so) we then have the business case to back up what the ultimate design is.” Mr Chambers said he estimated the design process would take six to nine months and once completed the shire would consider how to fund the project. He said while the shire had money in “airport reserves”, he was open to exploring funding from the Government or private sector.