AECOM snags $500M contract to build NV Faraday Future plant

Dive Brief:

AECOM announced Monday that it has been awarded a $500 million guaranteed-maximum-price construction contract for electric car manufacturer Faraday Future's $1 billion, 3-million-square-foot factory in North Las Vegas, NV.
The plant is designed to fit into the Nevada landscape, according to AECOM, with energy-efficient, sustainable features including skylights on the manufacturing floor, low-maintenance materials, solar panels and a cool-roof coating.
The demolition and grading phase at the site is currently underway. During this portion of work, the company also is digging retention pools that will trap water for utilization in the plant's cooling towers.

Dive Insight:

Faraday broke ground on the project in April and said it was on an accelerated construction schedule after questions about its financial stability initially cast doubt on its plans for a factory in Nevada. Major investor Jia Yueting’s company LeEco (formerly Leshi Internet Information & Technology Beijing) suspended trading of its stock during an acquisition at the beginning of the year, which made Nevada officials, who offered up a $216 million tax break to cement the move, a little squeamish. A multimillion-dollar deposit from Faraday kept the deal alive.

Faraday is in direct competition with electric-car maker Tesla, whose own $5 billion "gigafactory" battery production facility in Reno, NV, is nearing completion, and has scheduled its first car to hit the road in 2017, the same timeframe as Tesla's Model 3. Faraday said its new plant will create approximately 4,500 new jobs.

Despite the inherent competition between the two companies, both are part of a wave of activity that has sparked a Nevada housing boom, as well as a hot commercial real estate market. The influx of companies like Tesla and data company Switch into northern Nevada have contributed to lower unemployment and decreased vacancies, while plants and distribution centers for these huge companies made up 70% of all area commercial real estate transactions in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to Collier's International.

In addition, both Reno and Las Vegas will require 40,000 extra housing units by 2020 in order to accommodate the expected 11,000 new workers to the state, Curbed reported earlier this year.