GHD, one of the world’s largest engineering and professional-services firms, has bought Dallas-based Bowman Engineering & Consulting, planting the global company deeper in the busiest transportation engineering market in the United States. Terms weren’t disclosed. The deal, announced in July 2026, folds BEC’s 50-person team into GHD while the smaller firm keeps its name under a “Bowman Engineering & Consulting, a GHD company” banner.
Texas is where the infrastructure money is. Population growth and sustained public spending have turned the state into a near-constant pipeline of highway, transit and airport work, and GHD wants a bigger cut.
Why a Texas transportation engineering firm was the target
BEC isn’t big, but its client list is the point. Over nearly two decades the firm has delivered program and construction-management work for Dallas Area Rapid Transit, the Texas Department of Transportation, the Federal Transit Administration, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Trinity Metro. Those are exactly the public agencies handing out the multi-year contracts that global firms covet. Buying a company with sitting relationships is faster than building them from scratch.
“Their technical depth and long-standing client relationships are a natural complement to GHD’s capabilities,” said Juan Zorrilla, GHD’s Central Region general manager, framing the purchase as a way to take on bigger infrastructure jobs across the region. BEC runs offices in Dallas, Houston and Austin, the three metros absorbing most of the state’s growth.
Consolidation keeps rolling through the AEC sector
This is one more tuck-in acquisition in a year full of them. Engineering and construction M&A came back hard in 2026 as firms chased scale, skilled staff and exposure to infrastructure and power work. For a regional shop like BEC, joining a global network brings resources it couldn’t fund alone. For GHD, it buys instant credibility with Texas owners.
The risk in these deals is always retention. A 50-person firm’s value walks out the door on two legs, and a clumsy integration can bruise the client relationships that justified the price. GHD says the BEC brand and team stay put through the transition, a nod to that reality. Senior program manager Ross Bowman offered the familiar reassurance to clients: same people, same responsiveness, now with a deeper bench behind them.
What it signals for infrastructure owners
For public agencies in Texas, the deal can bring broader capability on complex transit and aviation programs. It can also thin the field of local bidders, a trade-off worth watching for owners who value competition. As reported by Texas Contractor, GHD is betting the state’s construction spending holds up long enough to make the math work. Given TxDOT’s forward program, and the demand feeding projects like the Pittsburgh International Airport terminal program, that’s not a wild bet.