The Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters named RSI President and CEO Lance Inouye (center) as 2020 Outstanding Union Builder of the Year. At left, Blake Inouye. PHOTO COURTESY PRP
end input, such as design-assist and design-build. “Noelani Elementary School Library is a unique project that showcases some of the things we can do,” he says. The Department of Education facility has “many high-sustainability features including bioswales, rainwater cisterns to recycle storm water, energy-efficient systems and low-emitting materials. There is also an attention to detail in features such as concealed steel plate connectors in the exposed
wood beam-to-column connections that will help in creating a nice aesthetic to the finished building.” As a father and a lawyer, Lance “has no shortage of advice for me,” Blake says. “Two precepts that are especially important in our line of work is ‘get it done now,’ and ‘follow up to completion.’ He reinforces this all the time to the staff. And it certainly applies to all aspects of what we do.”
RSI founder Ralph Inouye, center front, and other company executives and staff PHOTO COURTESY RALPH S. INOUYE CO. LTD.
Commercial Roofing & Waterproofing Hawaii Inc. Guy Akasaki, Dana Akasaki-Kenney, Candace Williams
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50 | BUILDING INDUSTRY HAWAII | OCTOBER 2020
Reinventing roofing in Hawaii was not on Guy Akasaki’s radar when he founded Commercial Roofing & Waterproofing Hawaii in 1993. “The first year was breathtakingly rough,” Akasaki says. “I believe it was around our third year in business, when we could see some light at the end of the tunnel, that I began to seriously meditate and vision on what Commercial Roofing could be. “I thought, ‘How could roofing be economically sustainable and energyefficient to reduce operating costs, Guy Akasaki along with the fact it seems like such a lot of wasted space?’ We began to get involved with labs and renewable energy startups” that also saw rooftops as runways to the future. Akasaki began to explore “integrating the roof and photovoltaic apparatus and systems” and the resulting financial, tax and asset valuation benefits. He began executing projects like the one-megawatt solar array on the 150,000-square-foot Unicold Cold Storage roof as well as similar projects for Chef Zone, the Waialae Country Club and the University of Hawaii parking structure. Akasaki also kept the Waipahu-based company’s repair operations going, and takes full advantage of “the advent of systems applications. We were able to provide a way to fiscally