Walter P Moore

Walter P Moore is a Houston-based engineering firm founded in 1931 and operating across eight disciplines: structural, civil, traffic, parking, transportation, building enclosure, diagnostics and construction engineering. It maintains offices across the United States and internationally, and runs a 24-hour emergency response line for forensic work. The firm engineered the Harris County Domed Stadium, better known as the Astrodome, and has built a long record in long-span sports roofs and stadium structures. Its parking practice designed the roughly 450-stall parking structure at the southwest corner of the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, part of the arena’s conversion to host an NBA and an NHL team in the same building.

The firm’s own service taxonomy is longer than the eight-discipline summary suggests. Its expertise page lists civil engineering, construction engineering, enclosure diagnostics, enclosure engineering, forensic engineering, parking, parking restoration, restoration and renovation, secure design, structural engineering, sustainable design, traffic and ITS and transportation planning, transportation engineering, and water resources engineering as distinct practices, and states that more than 50 areas of expertise sit beneath them. Two named specialties are called out separately: ConnecTID, a proprietary offering, and performance-based design, plus a flood protection specialty.

Markets are listed with the same granularity, and the spread is what distinguishes the firm from a pure structural house. Advanced manufacturing, aviation, civic, commercial, convention centers, cultural facilities, education, entertainment, federal, healthcare, hospitality, mission critical, mixed use and retail, mobility, parking structures, public works, roadways, science and technology, sports, tall buildings and transportation all appear.

The numbers the firm publishes as of its 95th year: 36 offices, six countries, more than 330 licensed professionals, more than 1,000 full-time staff. A Riyadh office is its most recently promoted international expansion.

Forensics is an unusual line for a design engineer to keep and worth knowing about if you are on the claims side of a dispute. The firm operates a 24/7 emergency response line and takes forensics requests through a standing intake form, positioned for insurance claim and litigation support rather than as an extension of design work.

Recent and named projects show the range: SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, the MAAPnext flood modelling and awareness project for Harris County, the Mickey Leland Federal Building renovations and the Bagby streetscape and paving improvements in Houston, and the MUSC Jenkins Children’s Hospital and Tourville Women’s Pavilion in Charleston, South Carolina. Older reference work includes the Bank of America Tower, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the University of Virginia Hospital and the Orange County Museum of Art.