ENR Texas & Southeast has named its design firms of the year, honoring WSP for the Southeast and Burns & McDonnell for the Texas and Louisiana region, which also covers Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arkansas, two firms whose work spans the Gulf Coast to the Carolinas and the Arkansas Delta to the Florida peninsula.
WSP was selected for its work in transportation, aviation and environmental services in the legacy infrastructure markets of the Southeast. The firm is principal in the Atlanta Aviation Associates joint venture, providing program management support for Hartsfield-Jackson’s multibillion-dollar ATL Next capital program, lead designer of FDOT’s Westshore Interchange, the largest infrastructure initiative in the Tampa Bay region, and has served as general engineering consultant on I-285 in Georgia since the firm also completed the design of I-20999. Reconstruction of the I-285 West Wall in Atlanta in less than 10 months and resources directed to disaster recovery in western North Carolina.
“Committing dedicated resources to put our clients in a position to deliver on their highest priority projects is key,” said Claudia M. Bilotto, WSP’s US Southeast Region Executive.
Burns & McDonnell won the Texas and Louisiana honor for integrated delivery work related to energy, data center and industrial growth in the five-state region. The Kansas City, Missouri-based employee-owned company provides Fort Worth, Texas’ first progressive design transportation project at Everman Parkway, a progressive design water reclamation facility in San Marcos, Texas, and on-call engineering services at the Port of Catoosa in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on more than 20 completed projects. In Houston, the company opened a dedicated innovation center with what it describes as the world’s only 360-degree immersive LED CAVE, deployed to support infrastructure planning at the Port of Port Arthur. The company also launched the Burns & McDonnell Construction Academy in 2025, providing hands-on training for craft labor on jobsites across the South.
Both companies reported significant community investment by 2025. Burns & McDonnell’s employee-owners contributed more than $1 million to United Way chapters across the region and awarded approximately 25 STEM education grants, totaling approximately $125,000, to K-12 schools in Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Puerto Rico. WSP directed resources to recovery efforts in the communities of western North Carolina affected by the disaster.
Full profiles will appear in the June 8 edition of ENR Texas & Southeast’s Top Design Firms.
