News & Insights

Salas O’Brien is proud to be recognized as the ENR MidAtlantic 2024 Design Firm of the Year. This award demonstrates success in the region from a growth and revenue standpoint as well as innovation, creativity, and a commitment to giving back to the community.

Read more in this feature article from the June issue of the publication (subscription required to view full article).

Award highlights

• In 2023 Salas O’Brien had a 39% year-over-year revenue increase, 12% organic growth, and 93% team member retention. More than 90% of the firm’s workers held company shares as employee-owners.
• Salas O’Brien supports regional programs that help local communities and promote education and careers in STEM and the construction industry. The firm’s employees have supported the Baltimore City Public School’s Annual Book Flood, Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania; ACE Mentorship Program of America, Washington DC chapter  and “Home for Good” Playhouse Event for Henrico CASA, an organization that recruits, screens, trains, and supervises volunteers who serve as court appointed special advocates.
• Salas O’Brien ranked #39 on the ENR 2024 Top 500 Design Firms list. Last year, Salas O’Brien ranked No. 78 on the ENR MidAtlantic Design Firm of the Year survey.

Top Regional Projects

• Robotics Mat Sinking Technology for USACE (Pittsburgh, PA): Salas O’Brien is leading a team of engineering experts to design, build, test, and commission an automated, articulated concrete mattress-sinking prototype for the US Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia and Memphis Districts. The technology will help USACE maintain the navigation channel of the Mississippi River through levee reinforcement, increasing production rates, improving safety, and reducing costs.
• Facility Assessments for the National Institutes of Health (multiple locations and states): The firm performed site assessments at NIH locations that help optimize operations, achieve sustainability goals and lower costs. The firm’s assessments at the Central Utility Plant and Cogeneration Plant in Bethesda, MD, which provide electricity, steam, and chilled water for NIH’s central campus facilities, resulted in improvements that led to $5 million utility bill savings and 58,000 tons of decreased gas emissions annually.
• Office Consolidation Program for WMATA (MD, DC, and VA): Salas O’Brien served as program manager for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)’s $1 billion headquarter consolidation program, to reduce operating expenses and improve employee work conditions. The program reduced the number of metro office buildings from 10 down to four and established three new LEED Gold high-rise office headquarter buildings for each of their three service regions: District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. Salas O’Brien served as the owner’s rep to ensure smooth execution of the program’s development, including providing MEP/FP engineering, energy modeling and commissioning services. The program ran from 2019-2023 and included two phases.

Look for the full Top Design Firm rankings in the June issue of ENR MidAtlantic.