Grade Beams Underway

Holiday travelers at Kansas City International Airport (KCI) may notice a flurry of new activity on the KCI New Terminal Project jobsite. As Kansas City area-based Berkel & Company, one of the largest deep foundations contractors in the United States, continues drilling permanent deep foundation piles, JE Dunn, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, has begun the concrete work that will shape the footprint of the New Terminal.

Each deep foundation pile will be fitted with a concrete cap that will sandwich grade beams, a foundation component made of steel reinforced concrete and used to connect column foundations. When in place, the concrete grade beams will provide support to the New Terminal’s exterior wall.

With pile caps and concrete grade beams in place, work can begin on pouring the concrete slab-on-grade. When the New Terminal is complete, the slab-on-grade will become the floor of the airline’s working spaces for baggage, maintenance, and operations. Crews will begin pouring floor slabs in early 2020; the entire process will take just under one year.

Passengers can look forward to seeing the steel structure of the New Terminal coming out of the ground in the spring of 2020.