Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is an employee-owned engineering, architecture and construction firm founded in 1898 and headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. It runs projects across power, water, aviation, transportation and commercial building, with thousands of staff spread across dozens of U.S. offices. The firm frequently serves as engineer of record or owner’s representative, the role it’s taking on the Kansas City Chiefs’ new $300 million headquarters and practice campus in Olathe, Kansas. Its practice covers planning, design and program management, with a heavy footprint in mission-critical and energy infrastructure.

Burns & McDonnell is an engineering, construction, architecture and consulting firm headquartered in Kansas City. The firm traces its founding to 1898 and operates as a 100% employee-owned company, working from more than 75 offices worldwide. Its stated mission, making clients successful, is paired with integrated teams of engineers, construction and craft professionals, architects, planners, technologists and scientists.

The company’s project portfolio reflects that breadth. Recent featured work includes a replacement passenger terminal in aviation, the KC Streetcar Riverfront Pavilion delivered through progressive design-build, the Southwest Substation in the power sector, and a demonstration-scale bioindustrial manufacturing plant. Burns & McDonnell groups its work across markets that include aviation; commercial, retail and institutional; power; and manufacturing and industrial.

In its home city, the firm was recently named owner’s representative for the Kansas City Chiefs’ new practice facility and headquarters in Olathe, one example of the local ties that accompany its global reach. Burns & McDonnell also fields a family of brands, including the consultancy 1898 & Co. and construction arm AZCO.

The firm reports ranking among the top 5% of U.S. architecture, engineering and construction firms for safety, and it publishes ongoing market analysis such as a quarterly construction market update. It notes one service limitation: it does not currently offer pure architectural services in Illinois or New Jersey, though it may provide design-build services for architectural projects there. Leadership is headed by Chair and CEO Leslie M. Duke.