Officials hope Eisenhower Airport’s leaky roof fixed

It looks like the leaky roof on Wichita Eisenhower National Airport’s $160 million terminal is no more.

At least that’s what Brad Christopher, assistant director of airports, is hoping.

The primary cause of water leaking into the 265,000-square-foot terminal building that opened in June 2015 appears to have been from poles that support lighting for the airplane ramp. The poles come through the terminal’s roof.

Custom-made flashing around the 20 poles, and related work, seems to have fixed the problem.

“We’re cautiously optimistic we’ve got most everything addressed,” Christopher said Wednesday. “But time tells.”

And it turns out the solution to resolving the leaky roof had nothing to do with work done by the contractor or subcontractors. In April, Christopher met with them to resolve the leaking roof, thinking it might be a problem that would be covered by warranty.

But it wasn’t.

“It was a design-related issue,” Christopher said. “The designers issued a RFI (request for information) and change order to address that” problem during construction of the terminal. The information never made it to the subcontractor.

“Somewhere in the process it didn’t get to the people that needed to have it,” he said.

The cost to fix the leakage around the poles totaled $12,000, or $600 per pole. Much of the cost was for the metal flashing, which Christopher said had to be fabricated specifically for those poles.

“We’re paying for it now instead of two years ago,” he said, adding the money came from the airport’s operating budget.

He noted the airport is self-supporting and does not receive its funding from taxes collected by the city.

This story was originally published August 23, 2017 at 5:43 PM with the headline "Officials hope Eisenhower Airport’s leaky roof fixed."