A. West Enterprise wins Sheppard Air Force Base bid

ALBANY — A. West Enterprise was recently chosen as the electrical contractor for an almost $15 million project at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas to design and build airfield lighting and repair circuit system controls.

The 749-day project will require more than 110,000 man hours of removing overhead electrical wires and replacing them with a new underground power distribution — to make power supply more reliable during inclement weather — and upgrading underground power distribution on the airfield.

“This is the biggest project I have ever been involved with,” A. West Assistant Manager Eddie West said.

West, a veteran of the Air Force, admits that the job’s airfield component alone appears daunting.

“It looks like it is almost as big as Albany,” he said.

The 749 days to complete the job include more than 100 days in the design phase, which is expected to start any day now, followed by 560 construction days. Eight contractors offered submissions for the Army Corps of Engineers’ project, and contractors from Arizona and Nebraska were asked to bid along with A. West.

The Sheppard Air Force Base job comes on the heels of a recent project at NASA’s Space X to rebuild its launch pad. The company also was notified Wednesday of a job it has been awarded to replace a transformer at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida.

A. West Enterprises has established a history of working with NASA on its facilities at Cape Canaveral.

Eddie West said the basic key to success on such high-profile projects is to continuously put the bids out there and to make a point of following up with clients.

“You try to do a really good job and keep the customers happy,” he said. “It is not always easy.”

Based in Albany, A. West Enterprise offers a range of services from residential service work to substation construction. It was founded in 2009 to provide electrical service and construction. The company was started out of a horse barn, and jobs with entities including Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany and Florida A&M University helped the company broaden its reputation.

Even during tough times, West said, the company has always been lucky enough to stay busy and is even in need of more employees to get its current workload done.

“For a small business in Albany, (and) there are a lot of bigger companies that do more than we do, eight years is a good amount of time,” West said. “It has been a steady growth.

“Everything we asked for, we got. Everything clicked.”

A. West recently finished completed a project for the University of Georgia and is expected to start a job soon at the Georgia Institute of Technology that is scheduled to last two or three months.

The company received the 2015 and 2016 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Blue Ribbon Small Business of the Year Award as well as the 2013 Albany Area Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year Award.