2024 Annual Report
COMMUNITY
At HDR, we make the world a better place through our community stewardship. We connect with the communities where we live and work, creating projects that make meaningful, lasting impacts. We build trusted client relationships, upholding our promise to do things right and support our clients as they prepare for the future. We learn from each other’s life experiences and perspectives to make great things possible. Through these common interests and goals, we work together to shape our industry, inspire creativity and innovation, and grow our company.
A WINNING CULTURE
Thank you to everyone on our HDR team of teams for your hard work in 2024 to deliver another consecutive year of profitable growth for our company. The ability of our team to pull together, live our values, and create a winning culture that is founded in deep technical expertise and a strong work ethic continues to positively impact our clients and communities.
Together we finished 2024 with yearover-year increases in net fees earned, net profit and contracted backlog. These solid results continue a multiyear trend of unrivaled performance. Driven by our culture of trust and thriving employee ownership model, our team successfully grew to more than 13,300 employees. We are now the largest 100% employee-owned firm in our industry in the United States and the fifth-largest 100% employee-owned firm across all industries. We continue to deliver exceptional quality in our work, as evidenced through numerous awards and recognitions received by our project teams in 2024 and included in this report.
We also made substantive progress last year to operationalize our 2027 Strategic Plan. We graduated our inaugural class of Career Connect, which was created to increase leadership development opportunities. We developed a career mapping and development program to help our team prepare for future career opportunities at HDR. We made significant progress to provide more streamlined support to our project teams through updated tools for quality and staffing, significantly enhanced IT services support, and several initiatives to integrate enhanced technologies into the delivery of our traditional services.
Within our business groups, we have added directors to facilitate quality management, maintain profitable delivery and deepen technical expertise. We have enhanced our local area offices with the requisite capabilities to support project delivery, and we have revamped the organizational structure of our cross sector team to facilitate continued growth and business integration. We established new operational area cost centers in Nevada, Utah, Georgia and South Carolina to help fuel our growth and better focus on our clients in these areas.
We remain committed to the communities where we work and live. The HDR Foundation set records in 2024 for total donors, office participation and money raised, adding nearly $2 million in available funding to the causes important to our team members. Our people continue to step up to offer support to colleagues, clients and communities when needed.
In 2025, we see many opportunities in front of us. Transportation, water, data centers, and power will likely be our strongest markets. Geographically, we expect to see continued strength in the southeastern United States, especially Florida, as well as in the Texas Gulf Coast area. We have a significant opportunity in front of us with technological advances that will enhance how we deliver our traditional services. These technologies, combined with the innovative spirit of our team, have the potential to give us a competitive advantage in our markets, increase our margins and bring more sophisticated solutions to our clients in less time. They also allow our talented staff to prioritize
tasks that channel their creativity and resources most effectively.
In support of our 2027 Strategic Plan, we will continue to advance several initiatives to enhance client relationships, upgrade our family of project management tools and work to improve quality management while streamlining business processes to drive future-focused performance.
We are a community of talented professionals who are connected through our matrix organization and share an aligned commitment to the success of our clients, our communities and our teammates. We are proud to be part of something larger than ourselves, with a shared identity as One HDR. This is the foundation for how we build strong teams who support and trust each other, continually learn and grow, and earn the enduring trust of our clients.
Teams with a winning culture do not rest when things are going well. We will capitalize on our success, strengthen our market presence, enhance our capabilities, and build long-term resilience.
Please accept my gratitude for everyone’s contributions to our team. Building on 107 years of success, we will accomplish great things by working together to serve our clients, which will strengthen our employee ownership model and energize our winning culture. It is a true honor to serve as your teammate.
John Henderson, P.E., CEO
Teams with a winning culture do not rest when things are going well. We will capitalize on our success, strengthen our market presence, enhance our capabilities, and build long-term resilience.
John Henderson, P.E., CEO
Eric Keen, Chairman
THANK YOU, ERIC
On behalf of your 13,000-plus teammates, please accept our sincere gratitude for your leadership, contributions and decades of service to our HDR team. Your distinguished career has earned the respect of your teammates, your community, our profession, and our industry. Thank you for all you have done to make our team successful, leading us with talent, integrity and vision.
Beyond your impact within HDR and our business, you have demonstrated extraordinary selflessness and generosity to causes throughout the world. Your legacy will live on through the HDR Foundation, positively impacting countless communities by uniting our employees through passion and dedication to service.
You have taught all of us to never settle, to always expect excellence and to fully commit to the credo of doing things right to make great things possible. Please accept our sincere wishes for a relaxing, happy and healthy retirement. We look forward to your continued service to HDR as part of our Board of Directors and thank you for more than 40 remarkable years of service to our industry.
OUR INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP RANKINGS
#1
Architectural Firm in Healthcare Design
Modern Healthcare Construction & Design Survey
Largest 100% employee-owned architecture/engineering firm
National Center for Employee Ownership
#2
Top Data Center A/AE Firms
Building Design+Construction, Giants 400
Top Architecture/ Engineering Firms
Building Design+Construction, Giants 400
#3
Top 100 Global Architecture Practices
World Architecture 100 Survey
#6
Top 500 Design Firms Engineering News-Record
OUR GLOBAL FOOTPRINT
13K+ Employees Worldwide 200+ Offices Around the Globe 15 Countries 25 Envision-Verified Projects (More than any other firm)
London, United Kingdom
Seward Highway Road and Bridge Rehabilitation (MP 75-90)
Portage, Alaska, United States of America
Community involvement has been the bedrock of our company for more than a century — it’s our commitment to the place we call home that makes us special. Our 13,000-plus employees in over 200 offices around the globe strive to make a difference every day, both in their day jobs and as community volunteers. We bring an impressive breadth and depth of services to our clients and strengthen these relationships through award-winning projects that connect communities and people and enhance their daily lives. We take pride in our employee ownership, understanding that we are all in this together and that our contributions matter as much to our immediate teammates as they do to our colleagues across the world. And through it all, we collaborate and create in the only way we know how — together.
OUR EMPLOYEES ARE OUR GREATEST ASSET
At HDR, we believe that the potential for leadership resides within everyone. We believe it can grow if continuously nurtured, and that providing development opportunities can increase morale, improve productivity, promote better decision-making, and build stronger teams. Above all, we believe that it is our duty to create meaningful employee experiences, forge strong connections and inspire diverse leaders to build strong and vibrant communities.
CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Our goal is to empower everyone at HDR to plan and develop their career so we can foster leadership, grow expertise, retain talent and collectively enhance our knowledge base. Ultimately, we want to make it possible to change the world for the better.
Career Connect: Designed for flexibility, Career Connect opens leadership training to all HDR employees, building enriching experiences that come from diverse perspectives and helping us to conduct business better. This program helps build leadership skills to meet the needs of current and future goals through four levels — Initiate, Develop, Apply, Inspire — each building on the previous.
Mentoring: As a company focused on cultivating the best in each of us, we view mentoring as a positive way to boost individual development. By investing in the future, mentoring provides a competitive advantage — and, by extension, a stronger, more resilient organization.
CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY
As an employee-owned firm, we strive toward an inclusive, sustainable future and to elevate our communities, industry and professions through humaninspired technical and creative solutions. Our corporate sustainability program is responsible for implementing and managing HDR’s sustainability strategy and reporting transparently.
INCLUSION, DIVERSITY & EQUITY
HDR is our company. Together, we build on each other’s life experiences and perspectives to make great things possible every day. This approach shapes our collaborative culture, encourages organizational trust and connects us closer to the clients and communities we serve. As colleagues, we all have a role in creating an inclusive environment where we are welcomed, valued, respected and empowered to bring our authentic selves to work every day.
Charlotte, North Carolina, United States of America
DAY OF GIVING
The HDR Foundation’s Day of Giving (“Igniting Possibilities”) again demonstrated the power of “giving back” with another record-setting year in 2024. Nearly 6,600 donors raised $1.9 million, and 108 offices (10-plus employees) reached 50% participation in our Food Bank Challenge.
In December, the employee-driven Foundation surpassed $11 million in grants awarded since its inception in 2012.
Boise River Greenbelt
Boise, Idaho, United States of America (HDR Foundation)
Our Boise employees have collectively spent 345 hours volunteering on the City of Boise’s river greenbelt — including a weekend replanting an area recently disturbed by construction. This $4,687 grant helped the City purchase native shrubs and forbs, seedling protection tubes and gardening equipment to revegetate the area, reducing the likelihood of erosion and water quality problems.
Queensland Koala Crusaders Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (HDR Australia Fund)
With the support of this AU$5,000 grant, Brisbane employees and their families planted more than 200 native trees and grasses to help the local koala population thrive at the Allambi Retreat. The day also included presentations from Queensland Koala Crusaders staff to teach community members how to spot koalas in need of rescue and further their understanding of the benefits of habitat expansion. “Many of our HDR projects interact with koalas and their habitat,” said Mark Fairweather, business development leader, transportation, and employee sponsor. “This helps us be better stewards in our community.”
Hawaii Foodbank
Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America (HDR Foundation)
Employees from our Honolulu office deliver a check to the Hawaii Foodbank, which received an HDR Foundation grant as part of the Day of Giving Food Bank Challenge.
Nashville, Tennessee, United States of
Orange County Sanitation District Headquarters Complex
Fountain Valley, California, United States of America
Sustainable, durable and timeless, the new Orange County Sanitation District Headquarters Complex at Plant 1 is designed to illustrate OC San’s core values of “honesty, integrity and respect for interactions between employees, the greater public and community.”
Economical and efficient, this Southern California public works building features hybrid mass timber, immersive exhibits and a transformed workplace experience, with optimized daylight, chilled beams and healthy interiors for a net-zero energy design solution. Nearly every design feature contributes to a cost-conscious green building performance while improving occupant well-being and welcoming community members.
© South Fork Wind
© Belinda Lawley
Newson’s Yard
London, United Kingdom
Originally built in the 1840s, Newson’s Yard has evolved into an indispensable part of the celebrated Pimlico Road Design District — an exclusive retail spot connecting London’s best artisans and craftspeople with clients looking for extraordinary art, furniture, home accessories and antiques. The overarching sentiment for the concept is centered on designing a vibrant artisan community within Newson’s Yard, creating a natural space akin to the charming Belgravia vernacular that will help draw in passersby and customers. The retail part of the development achieved the sought-after Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) Excellent rating.
South Fork Wind Substation
New York, United States of America
South Fork Wind, a joint venture project for Ørsted and Eversource, is a centerpiece in New York state’s ambitious clean energy vision — estimated to produce enough renewable energy to power 70,000 homes. The 132-megawatt project marks the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in United States federal waters. The project features 12 offshore wind turbines, a state-of-the-art transmission system and a 68-nautical-mile (78-mile) submarine cable to carry power from the wind farm site to East Hampton.
Rendering
Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Picton, Ontario, Canada
Upon its anticipated completion in 2027, the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital will be the first all-mass-timber acute care hospital in North America. With its biophilic properties, mass timber contributes to the design of a warm, human-centric environment that is inviting and open. By integrating sustainable building practices with advanced medical technology, the new Quinte Health hospital aims to reduce its carbon footprint and optimize energy use. Its design represents a significant step forward in healthcare infrastructure focused on sustainability.
Pittsburgh Airport Terminal Modernization Program
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
As Pittsburgh International Airport looked to the future, it saw the need for a modernized and adaptable airport terminal — one that updates technology and improves the passenger experience. The new structure, built between two arms of the existing X-shaped terminal, will consolidate check-in, ticketing, security and baggage operations into one connected facility, making trips quicker and more efficient. Once open in 2025, the new terminal and the associated landside improvements we designed are expected to cut the time from car to plane by half.
Hunts Point Energy Resiliency and Flood Mitigation
New York City, New York, United States of America
When Hurricane Sandy made landfall, it highlighted vulnerabilities in waterfront neighborhoods like the Bronx’s Hunts Point. Home to over 12,000 residents, Hunts Point houses one of the largest wholesale food distribution centers in the world, supplying 4.5 billion pounds of food to 22 million people annually and providing jobs to thousands of New Yorkers. To advance energy resilience on the Hunts Point peninsula, this project will provide reliable, dispatchable and resilient power to critical facilities on the peninsula through a combination of energy generation and energy storage solutions.
© Nic Lehoux
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, HDR Pavilion
Lincoln, Nebraska, United States of America
Located on the north side of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Architecture Hall, the HDR Pavilion provides students with embedded learning opportunities in mass timber design and construction, which is increasingly a preferred construction method in Nebraska and around the world. This project is part of an expansion that includes 14 new studio spaces, adjoining classrooms, and indoor and outdoor collaboration spaces for students to work with each other, instructors and industry partners. The pavilion is named in honor of HDR’s gift to the project and the firm’s deep connection to the College of Architecture and generations of alumni.
Logan County, Kentucky, United States of America
Silicon Ranch Corporation is one of America’s largest independent solar power producers. For more than a decade, we have worked together to preserve the environment on tens of thousands of acres of solar sites and served as the owner’s engineer to bring more than a gigawatt of solar power to life. The Russellville Solar Farm will include 500,000 American-made solar panels generating 173 megawatts annually, enough to supply power to 26,000 homes. This large-scale endeavor, Silicon Ranch’s largest project in Kentucky, highlights the company’s dedication to long-term, sustainable energy investments.
Russellville Solar Farm
Second Avenue Bridge Over I-94
Detroit, Michigan, United States of America
The first skewed, unbraced network tied-arch bridge in the United States crosses busy I-94 in Detroit. The Second Avenue Bridge, built with accelerated bridge construction methods, provides a complex and durable signature bridge to connect neighborhoods in the largest city in Michigan. The replacement structure was designed to completely span the expanded future roadway of I-94, and the bridge footprint needed to accommodate adjacent properties — most importantly, a historic recording studio that produced the earliest origins of Motown music.
National Center for Resilient and Regenerative Precision Agriculture
Lincoln, Nebraska, United States of America
With a focus on sustainable production strategies, including precision agriculture, the center will be dedicated to researching how communities will sustainably and efficiently feed the growing population. The center will bring unique research opportunities for various faculty members and students at the Innovation Campus. With a greater focus on modern agricultural practices and future crop production, researchers will play a pivotal role in delivering innovative solutions to producers, consumers and rural economies grappling with various agricultural challenges.
Setting the Standard: HDR Helps Pioneer First-Ever National Levee Safety Guidelines Rendering
Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we have worked alongside the United States Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a framework for the National Levee Safety Program, which included a set of national guidelines for the design, operations and maintenance of levee systems. The first-of-theirkind guidelines are a resource of best practices to help achieve nationwide consistency in improving the reliability of levees and increasing community resilience in areas behind levees.
Washington, D.C., United States of America
Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant
Gravity Thickeners Phase II
The Gravity Thickener Upgrades Phase II project improved the solid process operation and reliability of the downstream thermal hydrolysis system at the Blue Plains Advanced WWTP — the largest plant of its kind in the world. Modifications to the GT influent hydraulic profile will help avoid cascading flow conditions between process units and limit the amount of air entrainment, which will reduce the amount of foam and scum occurring on the surface of the gravity thickeners.
© Jared Beasley
Elkhorn River Bridge Replacement Arlington, Nebraska, United States of America
The Elkhorn River Bridge between Missouri Valley, Iowa, and Fremont, Nebraska, is one of many critical links in Union Pacific’s freight rail network. The replacement bridge opened to train traffic on schedule, thanks to the success of a collaborative design and broad understanding of the site and challenges presented by the Elkhorn River. By working alongside Union Pacific, our team shaped and delivered a quality design that eliminated existing vulnerability and improved network resiliency in the region.
Riverina Redevelopment
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Anticipated to be completed in 2027, this major defence project incorporates three base redevelopments: Royal Australian Air Force Base Wagga Redevelopment; Albury-Wodonga Military Area Redevelopment; and Kapooka Military Area Redevelopment. The scope includes major upgrades and replacement of existing infrastructure and facilities to support defence capability for the next 25 years. Across the three sites, the project includes new living-in accommodations, training facilities and car parks, refurbishment and upgrading of existing buildings, remedial works, and upgrades to infrastructure services.
Dollar Bay Marsh Restoration Project
Galveston, Texas, United States of America
Over the past half-century, the Dollar Bay and Moses Lake area on the Texas Gulf Coast experienced a significant loss of intertidal marsh. This project includes restoration of 72 acres of salt marsh complex, including 6,700 linear feet of breakwater, to provide shoreline protection to the new marsh and existing shoreline habitats. The nearly fully vegetated project site serves as a nursery to juvenile fish, crabs and other fauna, which supports many other species in the revitalized ecosystem.
© Galveston Bay Foundation
Rendering
Moffitt Cancer Center, Moffitt McKinley Hospital
Tampa, Florida, United States of America
Designed to inspire strength, hope and courage, the Moffitt McKinley Hospital expands the Moffitt Cancer Center’s capacity for inpatient hospital care and modernizes its ability to treat solid tumor cancers through a significant investment in image-guided surgical oncology. The facility brings a collaborative and translational environment to campus where clinicians and researchers can easily collaborate to accelerate discovery in cancer treatment. The spa-like hospital environment evokes feelings of calm and serenity for patients, visitors, staff and caregivers. Anticipated to increase the number of patients seen and reduce wait times, the inpatient surgical hospital responds to the cancer center’s mission of contributing to the prevention and cure of cancer.
Folsom Dam Water Control Manual Update
Folsom, California, United States of America
The fundamental purpose of the Water Control Manual update was to develop, evaluate and recommend to the U.S. Congress guidelines for the safe and efficient operation of Folsom Dam and Reservoir — reducing flood risk to the Sacramento area. The Folsom Dam Post-Authorization Change Report resulted in the authorization of a Joint Federal Project auxiliary spillway at Folsom Dam and a 3.5-foot dam raise, along with other flood damage reduction and dam safety features.
GLWA Linear System Integrity Program (LSIP)
Detroit, Michigan, United States of America
Great Lakes Water Authority operates one of the largest municipal utility systems in the United States, serving nearly four million residents in eight Michigan counties. GLWA launched a proactive pipeline assessment and renewal program to assess water transmission mains and wastewater interceptors and renew deteriorated pipelines. The LSIP provides guidance for upcoming short- and long-term capital planning through sophisticated tools. The results will help GLWA understand the impacts on ratepayers and prioritize capital projects.
John Glenn Columbus International Airport Midfield Terminal
Columbus, Ohio, United States of America
With the region’s population expected to continue rising, the Columbus Regional Airport Authority initiated a $2 billion effort to replace the current terminal at John Glenn International Airport, including updating its landside and airside infrastructure. The new, larger terminal will add capacity, improve the passenger experience and position the airport for ongoing success. The 1 million-square-foot terminal will be built in what was a parking lot, allowing the current terminal to serve passengers uninterrupted until completion.
Coral Reef Ecosystem Enhancement and Restoration
Guam, Pacific Ocean
The project aimed to revamp and modernize a deepwater port in the Pacific Ocean while avoiding impact on essential fish habitat and endangered species. To achieve this, the team collaborated closely with the United States National Marine Fisheries Service to produce positive outcomes despite many challenges. The rehabilitation site saw an increase in rugosity and habitat complexity, promising enhanced ecological functionality. Also, the area is expected to support a diverse array of native fauna, contributing to the marine ecosystem’s overall health.
Rendering
© Gensler
