Military industry forum brings together Guam businesses and international contractors

BY SKYLER OBISPO
Journal Staff

The Society of American Military Engineers Guam Post hosted its two-day industry forum from  Nov. 14 to Nov. 15, 2024 and brought hundreds of stakeholders across the local, federal, and private sectors to discuss the ongoing and future Department of Defense construction projects in the region over the next decade.

According to the forum’s website, a $11 billion budget has been earmarked for construction projects across the Western Pacific and an additional $1 billion was set aside for defense facilities development in Guam, the Northern Mariana Island, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau.

Already, the region has seen growing military activity. The movement of Marines from Okinawa to Guam had begun in December of last year and federal investments and Department of Defense projects number in the billions of dollars in some islands in the Northern Marianas according to panelists at the industry forum.

A topic discussed during one of the forum’s panels was the ports of entry on Guam; namely air and sea freight. It discussed what private firms would need for shipping items to Guam as well as transport options between the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Jack Scogin, general manager of American President Lines, was a panelist in that discussion and said that the forum was a great networking opportunity for APL, especially considering how small the surface shipping market is on the island.

“There are a finite number of importers that are bringing cargo into Guam to support all of the [military development] projects,” said Scogin. He continued in saying it was important for the company to have a presence at the forum to inform military contractors on how items get to Guam and the other services APL provides.

APL is an ocean freight carrier that operates as a part of the GMA CGM group a sea, land, air, and logistics solution and transports cargo internationally through 10 U.S. flagged vessels.

On Guam, APL imports on average 2,200 twenty-foot equivalent units or TEUs per month through two vessels: the APL Oceania and the APL Islander. Each vessel has a capacity of 1,700 TEUs and travels between Guam and Asia. “Forty percent of everything you see on the island of Guam was brought in by APL,” said Scogin.

The primary service APL provides the military is its ocean shipping but also offers trucking and packing services should the military require it, he said. Moreover, few ocean services come to the region making it a “remote and austere area” for the military and APL is one of the companies able to support the ongoing projects across Guam and the NMI, he continued.

In the coming months as contracts continue to be awarded, Scogin told the Journal that APL has positioned itself to support those contractors.

Besides shipping and logistics, some contractors looking to work in the region would also need to consider munitions of explosive concern or MEC.

As a result of the fighting during World War II, unexploded ordnance (UXO) can be found while digging or developing an undisturbed section of land which poses a safety concern to contractors.

According to vice president of Clear Path UXO Remediation LLC, Noah Wright, if you take plus or minus 1,000 feet of a historic World War II battle line, you could find hundreds to thousands of UXO in that area.

Due to likelihood of finding UXO in a development area, companies building within DOD land require a MEC clearance to begin construction, companies like Clear Path and also Oia’i’o Halo Hui MEC Remediation Service exist as subcontractors to provide clearance and solutions when encountering UXO.

At the industry forum, Wright was surprised to see the budget set aside for UXO companies for Guam.

“I was under the impression that funding was going to start winding down in the next 18 months to 2 years basically,” he said.

Roughly 3% of the budget was designated for these companies. That’s $1.7 to $2 billion of funding each year for the next seven years.

Both companies are small, locally founded businesses who took the opportunity to market and connect with companies who are coming to Guam for the first time.


Royden Fernandez, CEO of Oia’i’o and founder of the UXO Academy of Bombs and Bullets Guam, said that the objective for his company was to share with the community what his company does and the service it provides.

Additionally, for both companies, it was an opportunity to share with contractors not familiar with the region what the situation is on the ground.

The scope of work for both companies are similar. Depending on the project, their teams would survey an area using tools like metal detectors, to determine if there is any MEC present. If there are, they would notify authorities who have an active Explosive Ordnance Disposal team to remove the item from the area and render it safe through various means.

At any given project, hundreds to thousands of MEC material (shrapnel or UXO) can be found at the site, according to Fernandez, but sometimes they could survey without finding anything according to Wright.

Some of the challenges faced by the companies are servicing the other islands in the Pacific.

“Us being based here in Guam locally, it's the logistics of getting things out to these outer islands is a hurdle for us,” said Fernandez.

Additionally, working with local agencies is a challenge not only for Clear Path and Oia’i’o but also some of the other contractors working in the region.

Gary Huhn, project manager at Clear Path, said that overcoming bureaucracy is always a challenge when it comes to projects, but commends agencies like the Guam Environmental Protection Agency for coming out and being transparent with why things may take time.

“It was nice to get some faces in front of the bureaucracy, " said Huhn. “They did a very good job in explaining that they have a finite number of resources … one of the biggest issues they brought up is that everytime they have a very very well trained senior employee, one of these big companies snatches them up and offers them a lot more money and they got to start over and train someone else.” mbj