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.”

With a pedestrian bridge connecting Terminal B to Concourse B, passengers have an alternative to the people mover train.
Photo courtesy Balfour Beatty

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.”

The new parking garage is designed as five structures so that crews can do concrete pours every day of the week.
Photo courtesy Otto Construction

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 walkway foundations squeeze in between existing buildings, tunnels and utilities.
Image courtesy Balfour Beatty

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.

The walkway features a hub that provides a crucial transition between Terminal B and Concourse B.
Photo courtesy SMForward

Five in One

Otto Construction is building the garage in an approximately $229-million design-build contract—also a first of its kind for the county. International Parking Design Inc., with JWSE Structural Engineers, designed the polygon-shaped structure that spans approximately 453 ft in width and 868 ft in length, covering a total area of 1,945,571 sq ft. It is designed with a long-span, cast-in-place concrete system featuring post-tensioned slabs and beams, along with a slab-on-grade base, according to the contractor’s website. A lateral load-resisting system, achieved through moment-resisting frames in both longitudinal and transverse directions, was selected to create a visually open design that enhances security and wayfinding.

 Forrest Stuckey, Otto senior superintendent, notes the need for speed. “Typically for [parking garage] deck pours, we’d place one deck a week. We have 124 deck placements; that would be 2.5 years.” So the design-build team approached the structure as if it were five separate garages, each with its own weekly deck pour.

 “It ends up being every day of the week,” says Stuckey. “Garage A on Monday, B on Tuesday ... the concrete testing labs had to be willing to play ball. We needed buy-in from our subs and trade partners.” The team has two cranes and two concrete pumps on site, with two concrete plants each only about 10 minutes away, he adds.

“There were structural considerations relative to the maximum amounts of floor area that could be built without seismic joints,” says Raju Nandwana, president of International Parking Design. “We worked with the formwork contractor and structural engineer to divide the building into five segments as independent structures to be built concurrently.”

Stuckey notes one advantage for mechanical-electrical-plumbing subcontractors: “Typically on deck pours, the MEP contractors come out for a few days, then crew down and come back the next week,” he says. “Because this is every day, they are committed to being on site all week long with smaller crews.”

Thanks to a $2-million commitment by the airport, both the walkway and the garage will have permanent art installations. The installation in the garage will have hundreds of perforated steel panels featuring local place names and farmland-inspired imagery. The walkway will sport aluminum bird sculptures; suspended glass rondels, geographic brass inlays and native plant motifs; and lunar imagery and meteorite-inspired flooring.

According to the airport, an RFQ will be issued for artwork to adorn the additional six-gate expansion area on Concourse B. The estimated $415-million project is in the procurement phase with a projected opening in 2028.

Due to the different elevations of the two structures, the hub features escalators, elevators and stairs.
Photo courtesy SMForward

Looking Ahead

Other projects in SMForward include an approximately $25-million exit road, a planned baggage handling upgrade for Terminals A and B, an estimated $50-million ground transportation center for taxis, rideshares and shuttles, and eventually a consolidated car rental facility that will eliminate the current need to take a shuttle.

“We’re in the process of getting our concourse [B] expansion on the left side started with the procurement process,” says Chen. “That’s the next big, complex project that we’re about to initiate.”

The planned consolidated care rental facility will be “probably the most complex project in the whole program,” he adds. “Just from the equipment perspective, now you have to have fueling stations, wash stations, all in one facility.”

The overall SMForward program is currently slated for a 2028 completion.