Salas O’Brien is a multidisciplinary engineering and consulting firm founded during the 1970s energy crisis by Carl Salas and Dan O’Brien, now headquartered in Irvine, California with more than 120 offices across roughly 40 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces. The firm employs over 5,100 people and works across healthcare, higher education, mission critical, industrial, and commercial markets. Its scope covers mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection engineering, structural and civil work, commissioning, decarbonization and energy resiliency, process engineering and industrial automation, and forensic consulting. Recent work includes mechanical, electrical, plumbing and lighting design for the new Surrey hospital and BC Cancer Centre, a 1.33-million-sq-ft all-electric facility in British Columbia, along with the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont University and a bed tower expansion at UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies.
Six practice areas organise the work rather than office geography: built environment, energy and resiliency, process design and integration, digital automation and robotics, sustainability consulting and design, and forensic consulting. The built environment group carries MEP through structural and civil. The process group is aimed at facilities where the production line and the building systems cannot be designed separately. Forensic consulting sits apart from the rest, handling investigation and analysis of failures, damages and defects in structures and materials, alongside construction dispute and litigation support.
Salas O’Brien describes its staff as employee-owners working from locations across North America, and frames its own scope as running from quick-turn assignments through to the most complex systems, for government and private sector clients alike.
Energy is where the firm has pushed hardest. Its advanced energy and renewables service covers campus and district energy planning, feasibility studies, system design, construction administration and commissioning. Decarbonisation strategy is treated as a distinct offering spanning renewable supply through to sustainable use, and the firm publishes on deep retrofits, energy modelling, and microgrids for hospitals, the last of these a recurring theme rather than a one-off.
The published project list gives a fair picture of range. Central energy plants for Princeton University. A geothermal energy system for the Birchcliff Urban Towns development in Toronto. A greenfield gene therapy manufacturing facility for Pfizer in Sanford, North Carolina. Launch Complex 41 modifications for United Launch Alliance at Kennedy Space Center. The MSG Sphere for Sphere Entertainment in Las Vegas. Cold-formed steel engineering on the Park Union Bridge for the City of Colorado Springs. A milk balancing plant for Dairy Farmers of America in Middlebury Center, Pennsylvania. A water recycling plant for a confidential AI data centre client. A children’s patient tower for Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford.
Two further service lines are worth noting for owners thinking past handover: data analytics, visualisation and digital twins, and facility design, operations and maintenance. Both point at the operating phase of a building rather than its delivery.
