Insights

How Salas O’Brien Saved This City $50,000 Per Year

Salas O’Brien’s landfill client in Akron, Ohio, installed a landfill gas-to-energy (LFGTE) system that, combined with the anaerobic digester at a nearby composting plant, provides 95% of the two plants’ energy needs and saves the city $50,000 in utility costs each year. Here’s some background on this important technology. The US EPA’s latest report on […]

Engineering McDonald’s New Corporate Headquarters and Hamburger University

This past week, we welcomed the WMA Consulting Engineers to the Salas O’Brien family. WMA’s outstanding work, commitment to sustainability, and reputation for reliability make them an ideal addition to our team. One example of the team’s impressive work is the McDonald’s Corporation Headquarters, built in 2018 in Chicago’s West Loop. McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook […]

WMA Consulting Engineers Joins Salas O’Brien

Salas O’Brien is expanding again! We have merged with WMA Consulting Engineers, adding locations in Chicago and Denver and creating a combined firm with 21 offices and more than 600 employee-owners. The addition of WMA expands Salas O’Brien’s portfolio in the design of large high-rise, commercial, higher education, healthcare and institutional building projects. WMA will […]

Designing for the Good of Our Communities, One Fire Station at a Time

Salas O’Brien believes in supporting local communities through good design, and that’s why we’ve helped design many fire stations across North America, ensuring that these local heroes have safe, energy-efficient buildings that pay special attention to critical design elements such as generators, breathing air compressor systems, spaces for practice drills, exhaust and fume detection systems, […]

Old Meets New: Preserving the History of Buildings During Massive Renovations

For many commercial, retail, and hospitality venues in historic districts, “old” can be preferable—even premium. Some popular historic districts even put regulations in place to ensure buildings on their prime real estate maintain the historic charm that put them on the map. But historical renovations come with unique challenges. Often, these projects aim to accommodate […]

Achieving Efficiency and Value for Universities, Communities, and Hotels

At Salas O’Brien, we’ve been focusing on sustainability since well before the creation of LEED in 1995. Even without certifications and code requirements, sustainable design provides a clear long-term value for clients, and combined with the environmental benefit, the choice is often obvious. Although LEED is not the only measure of sustainability, our expertise and […]

Designing Spaces for Food, Travel, and Lodging in One of America’s Top 10 Metro Areas

Atlanta, Georgia, is exploding with offices, business headquarters, travelers, and commuters and is home to many Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 companies, including The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Airlines, UPS, and Home Depot. Salas O’Brien has helped design and engineer many facilities in Atlanta for clients in the transportation and hospitality industries. Here are three examples. […]

Recognizing Key Leaders at Salas O’Brien

Salas O’Brien is blessed with an amazing team of dedicated and talented professionals who model excellence and embody the Salas O’Brien difference. Each year, we recognize several of these team members for their demonstrated growth in leadership, technical skills, client or team development, and project management. The following employee-owners were nominated for an executive-level position […]

Retail at Disney Springs: Helping Design Memorable Experiences at the Happiest Place on Earth

In between visits with Mickey Mouse and Cinderella, Disney World guests can shop, dine, and find evening entertainment at Disney Springs, a themed promenade with four neighborhoods. Disney Springs houses more than 150 shops and dining experiences, including several notable flagship retail locations.

Applauding California DSA's New Electronic Plan Review

Salas O’Brien designs facilities that are a part of our everyday lives, whether they are the complex facilities where we work, produce, manufacture, and create, or the places our kids go to school, the universities that educate and research, the hospitals that rehabilitate, or the facilities that power our mobile world. We’ve always worked hard […]

Why Our Change Orders Are One-Third of Industry Average

Cumulative change orders on a large building will cause construction to run anywhere from 11-15% over budget and 10-20% over schedule. At Salas O’Brien, we’ve studied our change order rate and discovered that we consistently keep our change orders below 3% of construction costs. This means that on a typical $1 million construction project with […]

How Growing Differently Puts Our Clients First

At a recent ESOP shareholder meeting, CEO Darin Anderson spoke to Salas O’Brien’s employee-owners about how the company’s core values impact our growth, and what that means for the future. Why Grow? While growth can be a worthy goal in itself, Salas O’Brien believes that growth has never (and will never) prevent us from living […]