Freese and Nichols

Freese and Nichols is a Fort Worth engineering, architecture, planning and consulting firm whose roots go back to 1894, when John B. Hawley opened a private practice focused on water and sewer work. It’s still privately owned, with headquarters on Cherry Street downtown, about 1,400 employees and 34 offices. Water supply, dams, stormwater and treatment remain core, alongside transportation, aviation, urban planning, facilities design and program and construction management. It was the first engineering and architecture firm to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and has won it twice. At San Antonio International Airport, Freese and Nichols was picked in 2022 as program manager for the terminal development program and now leads the integrated program management office delivering the $1.6 billion Terminal C.

The numbers the firm publishes about itself: founded 1894, 132 years in business, roughly 1,400 skilled professionals, 34 offices nationwide, employee-owned.

The water practice is wider than the headline suggests. Water management and supply covers water resources planning, dams and levees, stormwater and flood resilience, coastal resilience, and water reuse and alternative supplies. Water and wastewater engineering adds planning, transmission and utilities, treatment, and tunneling and trenchless construction — the last being the specialism that matters when a main has to cross under a highway or a river rather than be trenched.

Environmental science is a separate group covering compliance and remediation, permitting and documentation, and ecosystem restoration. Transportation covers planning, roadways and bridges, highways and DOT work, and aviation, ports and transit. Urban planning and design covers urban planning, urban design, landscape architecture and campus planning. Facilities covers architecture, structural engineering, MEP, and power and controls engineering.

Infrastructure management consulting is the least obvious line and often the most useful to a municipality: asset management, financial strategies, and data management and analytics, sitting alongside program management, construction management and federal services.

The firm acquired Dallas-based Dunkin Sefko & Associates to expand urban planning. That firm had been in business since 1973 and served more than 60 municipalities across Texas, which is a meaningful addition to an engineering practice whose client base is largely public.

Three innovation examples the firm leads with: modelling approaches behind what it describes as the nation’s most comprehensive flood hazard maps, the Cook Park project rejuvenating Atlanta’s historic Westside, and a fast-track pump station delivering a reliable water source during drought.

Headquarters is in Fort Worth on 817-735-7300.