OREANDA-NEWS. July 09, 2014. The Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA),hosted Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials from Washington, D.C. at O'Hare International Airport.

Eduardo Angeles, the recently-appointed Federal Aviation Admininstration (FAA) Associate Administrator of Airports and more than a dozen of his staff members met with CDA Commissioner Rosemarie S. Andolino and CDA senior staff at the airport. Commissioner Andolino provided an update on the status of the O'Hare Modernization Program (OMP).

The group visited the 12-story South Air Traffic Control Tower (SATCT), currently under construction on the south airfield at O'Hare. The SATCT will be turned over to the FAA at the end of this year. The FAA will then install its equipment in the Tower and it will be commissioned in October 2015.

"On behalf of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, we were pleased to host Administrator Angeles and his team from Washington, D.C.," said Commissioner Andolino. "It is important for us to meet our FAA partners and bring them up- to-date. on projects at Chicago's airports. And there is nothing like experiencing the airfield at OHare from 12 stories up."

Construction on O'Hare's third air traffic control tower began in Spring 2013. The CDA and FAA approached the design and construction of the south tower using best practices and lessons learned from building the North Air Traffic Control Tower at O'Hare which opened in 2008. The south tower has been designed to achieve LEED Gold certification. The sustainable elements include a green roof on the base building, as well as use of geothermal as the primary energy source for heating and cooling.