Good News is Worth Sharing

A subscription may be required to read full article in ENR West by Aileen Cho.

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Anvesh Motadoo laughs with delight and a bit of amazement when he compares previous experiences working on airport projects to the $140-million new footbridge at Sacramento International Airport (SMF) as part of its overall $1.4-billion modernization and expansion program.

Instead of yelling at him in annoyance, “here, the community is so happy about it,” says the senior project manager with Balfour Beatty. “They love the airport. We walk down the street and passengers ask, ‘What is this?’ And we talk to them. They’re like, super excited.”

SMF had the busiest month in its history this June with 1,296,818 passengers, according to the county. It saw 13,822,315 passengers in fiscal year 2025, also a record. “We have recovered from COVID very quickly,” says T.J. Chen, deputy director of planning and development at the airport. “We’re the only airport in Northern California that’s experiencing significant growth.”

To keep up with that growth, the SMForward program is underway. The glass-enclosed pedestrian walkway topped out this summer, with a planned opening next year. A 5,500-space new parking garage is also under construction, as are roadway realignments, all funded in part by a $469-million bond issuance last year and a $36.1-million TIFIA loan from the Build America Bureau this year—a first for airports, which became eligible for such loans under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

The topping out of the quarter-mile walkway—built by Balfour Beatty and designed by DWL Architects and Planners and with a joint venture of Parsons Corp. and Vanir providing construction management and inspection services—marked a key milestone for SMForward. It is the first construction manager-at-risk contract for Sacramento County.

“Contracting can be very litigious and contentious, but we don’t have that,” says Chen. “We’re going to have our disagreements, but we’ll always find a way to work it out. I see Balfour Beatty truly as partners, because we can’t do this ourselves. We need their expertise, their resources, their knowledge.”

Both Building and Bridge

Balfour Beatty set up its field office directly on the airport next to the project site. Crews poured 5,136 cu yd of concrete, set 1,703 tons of structural steel and installed 153 auger cast piles and seven cast-in-drilled-hole piles, about 90 ft deep, for the walkway foundations.

The steel erection spanned three active roadways—Lindbergh, Lower Airport and Upper Airport—without disrupting airport operations, a feat made possible through six months of planning and coordination with airport personnel.

The pedestrian walkway will connect Terminal B and Concourse B, offering an alternative to the at-capacity automated people mover and providing an option if it were to break down. Crews are working on the installation of elevators, moving walkways, roofing, curtain wall and exterior finishes. Terrazzo flooring, commissioning and final finishes are scheduled for next year.

“The complexity of this project is that the terminal and the concourse are at different elevations,” says Motadoo, noting a 70-ft difference. Moreover, the structure had to meet both bridge and building codes. “Typically, you either have a building or a bridge, but this is about 50% on the bottom up a bridge structure ... on the top, it has to look like a terminal. When you’re talking about a deep-foundation bridge, our tolerances are 1 or 2 inches. When you come up, you’re talking about an eighth of an inch in tolerance.”

The south portion of the walkway aligns with the third level of Terminal B and transitions into a hub structure to bring people down to the Concourse B level via escalators, stairs and elevators.

Another unexpected challenge arose when crews operating the drill rig for the foundations hit a slab of concrete 17 ft deep, says Kyle Frandsen, Balfour Beatty vice president. The 12-in. “rat slab” had been poured years ago just above the underground water table.

 “So we had work through it,” says Motadoo. It was really fun to see how the team came together, including the design team at the airport. Everybody was like, what do you need to keep this operation going? Because we had about 25 people, really specialized drillers there. So we just kept going. We didn’t stop a beat.”

Frandsen notes the proximity of columns to utilities, terminal facilities and a baggage handling tunnel. “We had to thread the needle,” he says. Building information modeling helped avoid clashes as the tunnel wedged through the tight spaces.

The constrained conditions include the ongoing construction of the Terminal B parking garage just yards away.