Sargent & Lundy

Sargent & Lundy is a Chicago engineering firm founded in 1891 that works almost exclusively in power generation and delivery. Over more than a century it has engineered a substantial share of the U.S. generating fleet across coal, gas, nuclear and renewables, along with the transmission and substation infrastructure that connects it. Nuclear is a defining line of business: the firm handles reactor plant design, licensing support and the detailed site-specific engineering that turns a standardized reactor into a permitted facility on a particular piece of ground. It holds that role on TVA’s Clinch River Unit 1 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the first BWRX-300 small modular reactor headed for construction in the United States, working alongside Bechtel and GE Vernova Hitachi. The practice also covers energy storage, grid modernization and owner’s engineering for utilities and independent power producers.

Frederick Sargent and Ayres Lundy went into business together in 1891 and put electric lights into the World’s Columbian Exposition two years later. The firm has stayed in the Chicago Loop ever since, and it is still owned and run by its own engineers — nearly 75 percent of staff are engineers or designers, holding degrees from more than 650 colleges and universities.

Twelve service lines carry the practice: nuclear power, nuclear power consulting, data centers, grid, conventional power, renewable energy, environmental, oil and gas, decarbonization, consulting and planning, government services, and project services. Data centres are the newest of those and increasingly the busiest, since the interconnection and on-site generation questions a hyperscale campus raises are the same questions the firm has answered for utilities for a century.

Headcount is roughly 4,000 worldwide, of whom more than 1,200 work in Chicago. That number is climbing. Over the past year the firm added more than 300 local roles, with about 200 more Chicago hires planned and over 1,500 openings globally. To hold them it is moving headquarters from 55 E. Monroe Street to 77 W. Wacker Drive, expanding its lease again in January 2026 to nearly 448,000 square feet across the 51-storey tower — about 60 percent more space than it had before, and one of the largest Chicago office leases in years.

Beyond Chicago the firm works from over thirty offices and in more than 100 countries. Regional offices in Wilmington, Delaware and Chattanooga, Tennessee are long established, with more recent additions in New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and two locations in Puerto Rico, where the firm supports transmission and distribution reconstruction and grid modernisation. Growth has also come by acquisition, including ARES Corporation’s Energy Services Division and Summit Engineering Services.

Victor Suchodolski became chairman, president and chief executive in January 2023, having previously led the grid infrastructure business. Government work — Department of Energy, defence and environmental management — sits under a separate services group covering facility operations, specialty equipment design, and safety, security and risk management.

Two things stand out for an owner assessing the firm. Quality is governed by an ISO 9001 system that is independently audited, with a quality council chaired by the CEO and mandatory reviews at project milestones. And the firm’s engineers sit on over 300 national code committees and industry compliance bodies, holding more than 80 chair, vice-chair or officer roles — which means the standards a project is judged against are often written, in part, by the people engineering it.