Texas Construction's First-Ever Top Design Rankings

List Reflects Cross Section of A&E Firms Around the State

by Eileen Schwartz

Texas Construction presents its first-ever Top Design ranking, and the resulting list of 75 architect and engineering firms shows that the firms collectively billed nearly $1.6 billion in state and approximately $5.2 billion from all projects.

Palmer Course at La Cantera resort, San Antonio. Image courtesy of Pape-Dawson Engineers of San Antonio, who designed the utility and roadway infrastructure and provided civil and environmental engineering services for the golf course and related facilities and the resort hotel..

Over the past decade, Texas Construction has conducted annual rankings of general contracting and specialty firms in the state. As part of our continuing effort to cover the state's dynamic construction industry, we present our first-ever Top Design ranking.

Our maiden voyage proved a successful journey, with 75 engineering and architecture firms responding to our survey. Texas Construction made every effort to reach asmany engineering and architect firms in Texas as possible, including some out-of-state businesses with offices in Texas.

Our hope was to provide a list that, while certainly not representative of the entire architectural and engineering industry in Texas, is an accurate snapshot of the types of firms working in the state. The information provided on the following list is derived from each firm's returned survey form, and The Top Design ranking is based upon each firm's 2004 billings for projects performed in Texas. Totals of reported worldwide billings are also listed.

advertisement

Collectively, the value of in-state billings for the 75 firms was almost $1.6 billion. The value for billings including out of state and international was about $5.2 billion.

As with our other rankings, we include additional useful information about each listed firm, including Web sites, physical addresses and phone and fax numbers of main offices.

Topping our list was Dallas-based Carter & Burgess, with $173.8 million in revenue for Texas projects. The 75th firm, Architectural Group International Inc. of Dallas, reported in-state earnings of just under $400,000 and total revenue of $1.5 million.

With the publication of our first design ranking, we would like to thank those firms that provided information and chose to participate. As word spreads through the industry about this important annual survey, we expect to see the list grow as our other top lists have.

As part of the rankings and at the end of The Top Design listings, we included the top companies ranked by revenue in eight specific categories and one miscellaneous, followed by profiles of five firms chosen to represent regional diversity of companies.

Top Design Firms List >>

TopDesign Firms - Profiles:

Corgan Associates >>

Bury+Partners >>

Pape Dawson Engineers Inc. >>

Carter & Burgess Inc. >>

Kirksky Architecture >>