The $5.1-billion Salt Lake City International Airport Redevelopment is wrapping up its Phase 4 Concourse B expansion and handing over the final seven passenger gates on October 27. This milestone represents 10 years of intense airfield phasing and complex engineering coordination to keep a busy airport running for 35 million passengers.

One of the project’s biggest challenges was building the new gates right next to active taxiways.

To maintain safe aircraft access to and from gates through active construction zones, the team adopted an “airport operations come first” approach, establishing construction work areas only after determining the setbacks required for gate access, aircraft pushback and tug operations, says Robert Millar, aviation project director for lead design firm HNTB.

“HNTB coordinated closely with (terminal architect) HOK and airline stakeholders to align terminal and civil construction schedules, ensuring existing gates remained operational until replacement gates were available,” says…