Salt Lake City Airport Finishes $5.1B Rebuild: Phasing Lessons for Subs

Salt Lake City Airport Finishes $5.1B Rebuild: Phasing Lessons for Subs

Salt Lake City’s $5.1 billion airport redevelopment finishes Oct. 27 with the handover of the final seven Concourse B gates, closing a 10-year, four-phase program that kept the hub running for 35 million passengers. ENR details the methods.

Market Impact

The handover brings the airport to 94 gates. Concourse B was built by a separate joint venture of Austin Commercial and Okland under a $545 million contract. The wider program was led by HNTB as lead design firm and HOK as terminal architect. A Holder Construction and Big D Construction joint venture (HDJV) handled the crane-heavy work.

The hardest part was building new gates beside active taxiways. According to HNTB aviation project director Robert Millar, the team took an “airport operations come first” approach. It set construction work areas only after fixing the setbacks needed for gate access, aircraft pushback and tug operations. Existing gates stayed in service until replacements were ready, and widebody access to international arrival gates was preserved until new international-capable gates opened.

Fuel and cranes drew the most detailed planning. Millar said the jet fuel sequencing plans were “particularly detailed.” They involved specialty installers and testing contractors, with overnight shutdowns for flushing, testing and tie-ins so airline fueling was not disrupted. For cranes, the team mapped temporary “crane roads” for crawler cranes and checked that big cranes did not block the control tower’s view. HDJV superintendent Brent Christiansen said the FAA required a weekly 7460 meeting, set a ceiling and hours for lifts, and that weather was the biggest challenge because of ILS requirements. Crews had to be ready to lower and move equipment at a moment’s notice.

The program also extended a passenger tunnel built years earlier and preserved as a future connection. The team designed temporary shoring to hold the end of the existing tunnel after the overlying soil was removed. The joint design had to limit differential settlement and keep waterproofing continuous between old and new sections.

What It Means for Subcontractors

• Fuel and mechanical trades: Price overnight-only windows for flushing, testing and tie-ins on live fuel systems. Per the source, specialty installers and testing contractors were part of the sequencing plan, so expect to be written into it early.
• Crane and rigging contractors: Plan around an FAA-set lift ceiling and lift hours and a weekly 7460 coordination meeting. Carry standby capacity to lower and move equipment quickly when ILS weather limits hit. Our inference: weather standby belongs in the bid as a line item.
• Civil and site contractors: Ask for setback drawings for gate access, pushback and tug paths before you mobilize. Work areas on this program were set only after those setbacks were defined. Crane road layouts were also designed up front.
• Tunnel, shoring and waterproofing crews: Tie-ins to existing structures need temporary shoring, settlement-tolerant joint design and waterproofing continuity. Bid these as their own scopes, not as part of the main excavation.
• Schedule risk: Existing gates stayed live until replacements opened. Our inference: that sequencing left little room for slipped handovers, so check how your milestones tie to gate-turnover dates.

The source does not say whether further work is planned at the airport or give subcontract package values beyond the $545 million Concourse B contract.