Black & Veatch

Black & Veatch is an employee-owned engineering, procurement and construction firm founded in 1915 and headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. It works across water and wastewater, power generation and delivery, telecommunications and industrial process markets, and it is one of the most established water engineering practices in the United States. Black & Veatch served as engineer of record on the $74.3 million modernization of the Kansas River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Lawrence, Kansas, completed in July 2026, converting four aeration basins to biological nutrient removal and replacing chlorine disinfection with ultraviolet while the 1956 plant stayed in service. Tightening nutrient discharge limits keep generating retrofit work of that kind.

Beyond its water and power roots, Black & Veatch operates as a full engineering-procurement-construction contractor across a notably broad set of markets: liquefied natural gas, renewable energy and solar, private telecommunications, data centers, mining, electrified transportation, and advisory and cybersecurity services. It carries that work globally with a professional staff of roughly 13,000, and Engineering News-Record consistently ranks it among the largest design firms in the United States. The EPC model means the firm can take an energy or water program from feasibility and design through procurement and construction under one contract. For owners, that single-source scope is often the reason a complex infrastructure project lands here.