Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Medical Center: Designing Surgical Facilities Without Interrupting Patient Care
Healthcare facilities must continuously evolve to support advances in medicine, changing patient needs, and increasingly sophisticated technology. For Veterans Affairs medical centers, modernization often presents an additional challenge: delivering major facility upgrades while maintaining uninterrupted patient care. At the Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Medical Center, OEI was selected to support that mission through the design […]
Designing for Security, Flow, and Mission: Inside OEI’s Work at Lackland Air Force Base
When people think about engineering on a military base, they often imagine runways, hangars, or large-scale facilities. What they don’t always see is the infrastructure that keeps everything moving, securely, efficiently, and without disruption. That’s exactly where O’Brien Engineering’s work at Lackland Air Force Base, part of Joint Base San Antonio, comes in. Table of […]
GIS Mapping Helps Reduce Costs and Improve Infrastructure Performance
Infrastructure projects are increasingly shaped by complex site conditions, regulatory requirements, aging public systems, and changing hydrologic patterns. Whether planning drainage improvements, evaluating flood risk, or supporting new development, early design decisions often determine whether a project remains cost-effective throughout the design and construction phases. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become an essential engineering tool […]
Creating a Better Standard of Care: OEI’s Work on the West Texas VA Community Living Center
When people think about healthcare design, they often picture hospitals, fast-paced, highly clinical environments built for efficiency and acute care. Not every healthcare facility design is for that purpose. Some are designed to feel like home. That’s the idea behind a VA Community Living Center (CLC), and it’s exactly what O’Brien Engineering helped bring to […]
One Water. Solved. Rethinking Water Resource Management in Texas
Texas can’t manage its water future with fragmented solutions. Rapid population growth, aging infrastructure, prolonged drought, extreme flooding, declining aquifers, and rising demand across municipal, agricultural, and industrial sectors are converging into a statewide systems challenge. For decades, Texas approached water resource management as a series of independent problems. That model is no longer sustainable. […]
What Are Environment Studies and Why Does Your Infrastructure Project Need One?
Every infrastructure project, from a new roadway or dam to a military facility renovation or water system upgrade, has an environmental footprint. Understanding that footprint before construction begins is not just good practice – it is a regulatory, legal, and community obligation. Environment studies are the structured, data-driven assessments that make that understanding possible. For […]
Environmental Licenses and Permits for Civil Engineering Projects: What You Need to Know in 2026
Civil engineering projects take place in the real world, and the real world has rivers, wetlands, floodplains, aquifers, and ecosystems that do not pause for construction schedules. Environmental licenses and permits are the legal framework that governs how infrastructure projects interact with those natural systems, from the first equipment on site through the life of […]
What Is Environmental Design in Civil Engineering?
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, civil engineers have a professional responsibility to integrate sustainability into infrastructure design, addressing environmental, social, and economic outcomes across the full lifecycle of every project. Environmental design is how that responsibility is put into practice: it is the discipline of planning, designing, and building infrastructure that minimizes […]
Dam and Levee Safety: What Owners Need to Understand About Levee Design
Flood protection infrastructure rarely fails without warning. In most cases, dams and levees deteriorate gradually, responding to repeated flood loading, aging materials, and changing environmental conditions. The challenge is that many of the most serious risks are not immediately visible. Understanding how levees behave over time, how levee design influences long-term performance, and when engineering […]
Dam Engineering: 4 Key Considerations for Safe, Sustainable Design
Dam engineering requires more than structural design. Effective solutions must account for water behavior, soil conditions, regulatory requirements, and long term environmental impact. O’Brien Engineering, Inc. recently managed a multidisciplinary team project at an infantry training camp for the Texas Army National Guard. It required close coordination across engineering disciplines to address hydrologic, geotechnical, and […]