Top Design Firms
ENR Texas & Southeast Announces WSP, Burns & McDonnell as 2026 Design Firms of the Year
A rendering of the San Marcos Water Reclamation Facility in Central Texas, where Burns & McDonnell, named ENR Texas & Southeast Design Firm of the Year for the Texas & Louisiana subregion, is delivering the project using a progressive design‑build approach.
WSP, named ENR Southeast’s Design Firm of the Year, is part of the design‑build team delivering the new John T. Brooks Bridge, which connects Fort Walton Beach to Okaloosa Island, Fla.
ENR Texas & Southeast has named its Design Firms of the Year, honoring WSP for the Southeast and Burns & McDonnell for the Texas & 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 across the Southeast's legacy infrastructure markets. The firm is prime on the Atlanta Aviation Associates joint venture, providing program management support for Hartsfield-Jackson's multi-billion-dollar ATL Next capital program, lead designer on FDOT's Westshore Interchange—the Tampa Bay region's largest infrastructure initiative—and has served as general engineering consultant on Georgia's I-285 at I-20 West Interchange since 2019. The firm also completed design for the I-285 West Wall reconstruction in Atlanta in under 10 months and directed resources to disaster recovery in western North Carolina.
"Committing dedicated resources to put our clients in a position to deliver their highest priority projects is a key," said Claudia M. Bilotto, Southeast region executive for WSP in the U.S.
Burns & McDonnell earned the Texas & Louisiana honor for integrated delivery work tied to the region's energy, data center and industrial growth across five states. The Kansas City, Mo.-based, employee-owned firm is delivering Fort Worth, Texas' first progressive design-build transportation project on Everman Parkway, a progressive design-build water reclamation facility in San Marcos, Texas, and on-call engineering services at the Port of Catoosa in Tulsa, Okla., across more than 20 completed projects. In Houston, the firm opened a dedicated Innovation Center featuring what it describes as the world's only 360-degree LED immersive CAVE, deployed to support infrastructure planning at the Port of Port Arthur. The firm also launched the Burns & McDonnell Construction Academy in 2025, providing hands-on training for the craft workforce at job sites across the South.
Both firms logged significant community investment in 2025. Burns & McDonnell employee-owners contributed more than $1 million to United Way chapters across the region and awarded roughly 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 western North Carolina communities affected by the disaster.
Full profiles will appear in the June 8 Top Design Firms edition of ENR Texas & Southeast.
