Buro Happold is growing in Pittsburgh

A vibrant and authentic town, we’re proud to call “the Steel City” home. Our local presence in Pittsburgh acts as a gateway to the region and throughout the Midwest.

In 2012, Buro Happold staff began working and living in Pittsburgh, off the back of The Tower at PNC Plaza, a commercial building dubbed the “greenest skyrise” in the world, located in downtown Pittsburgh. This local presence propelled Buro Happold into the Pittsburgh community, and helped solidify a number of project wins throughout Pittsburgh and the Midwest region.

The Buro Happold team in Pittsburgh provides multidisciplinary engineering and high performance solutions for the diverse set of clients served, including higher education institutions, city and state agencies, financial corporations and cultural entities.

At Buro Happold we get to work on the most exciting, legacy, groundbreaking projects in the world. To be able to do that in Pittsburgh, our community, is an amazing experience.  With projects like The Tower at PNC Plaza, the Terminal Modernization Program at Pittsburgh International Airport, countless sustainable developments, and great work at our higher education institutions, we take steps to make our city better every day.
Jeremy Snyder, Principal – Pittsburgh

Meet our leadership team in Pittsburgh

Jeremy Snyder, John Shaw, Mike Weleski

Our Pittsburgh office is led by principal Jeremy Snyder who is responsible for leading multidisciplinary engineering teams in the design of innovative and sustainable projects. Jeremy worked in Buro Happold’s New York office until 2013 when he moved to Pittsburgh to finish work on The Tower at PNC Plaza and further grow Buro Happold’s great breadth and depth of work in Pittsburgh, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest.

Joining Jeremy is a group of new employees including associates John Shaw and Mike Weleski. John Shaw has nearly 25 years’ experience providing sustainable and high performance building consulting engineering. He has engineered buildings for both renovation and new construction work in the higher education, industrial, government, and commercial sectors. Mike Weleski is an associate plumbing and fire protection engineer with over 22 years of experience. Mike has been focusing on the project management side of the business and managing jobs locally in the Pittsburgh area. Both John and Mike are heavily involved in the design of the Terminal Modernization Program at Pittsburgh International Airport.

I am extremely excited to work on the Pittsburgh Airport Terminal Modernization Project, which will help shape the future of Pittsburgh as well as grow Buro Happold’s local and US aviation portfolio. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be involved on a project of this magnitude in my hometown.
Mike Weleski, Associate – Pittsburgh

Exciting engineering projects being completed throughout Pittsburgh

Our work in the Pittsburgh area includes notable projects such as the exciting Terminal Modernization Program at Pittsburgh International Airport, the recently completed Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper Quad Project, the first naturally ventilated high rise in the United States – The Tower at PNC Plaza, the University of Pittsburgh Sustainability Plan, and the high-tech Carnegie Mellon University, ANSYS Building. Read more about these exciting projects and find out how we successfully engineered them below.

Terminal Modernization Program at Pittsburgh International Airport

The Terminal Modernization Program at Pittsburgh International Airport will include the addition of a state of the art 635,000ft2 terminal that will be situated between existing concourses C and D. The new 51-gate terminal will consolidate check-in, ticketing, security and baggage operations into one connected facility along with indoor and outdoor green plazas and gathering spaces. Working with Gensler + HDR in association with luis vidal + architectsBuro Happold is providing MEP engineering and energy modeling analysis on the new structure. The new airport will better serve passengers and fulfill the region’s future needs while evoking the essence of Pittsburgh.

Images: Terminal Modernization Program at Pittsburgh International Airport (© Gensler + HDR in association with luis vidal + architects)

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper Quad Project

As a hub for technology-enhanced learning and research, the Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper Quad Project – designed by Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners – is a five-story business school that features more than 300,000ft2 of collaborative, flexible spaces for students and staff. Pioneering use of BubbleDeck technology within our structural design proved revolutionary in the realization of the Business School. Carnegie Mellon is the first university in Pennsylvania to use this technology, which included the use of 220,000 bubbles, making this the largest BubbleDeck void slab system in the US. This efficient structure considerably reduced the embodied energy of the building, and contributed to the building’s LEED Gold certification.

The Tower at PNC Plaza

Rising 33 stories above downtown Pittsburgh, The Tower at PNC Plaza provides an impressive new 800,000ft2 headquarters for the PNC Financial Services Group Inc. Known as a pioneer in environmentally responsible development and operations, PNC had ambitions to establish a new benchmark by creating the world’s greenest office tower. Teamed with Gensler, the tower is the first building in the US that uses a fully automated double-skin facade and incorporates a solar-power chimney. The building has 92% of its interior naturally lit during daylight hours and can operate in passive ventilation mode for 42% of its total working hours.

Images: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper Quad Project (© Albert Vecerka/Esto), The Tower at PNC Plaza (© Connie Zhou), Carnegie Mellon University, ANSYS Building (© BCJ)

University of Pittsburgh Sustainability Plan

The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) has a rich history of sustainable initiatives and robust leadership across a variety of departments. The University is looking to expand their efforts by creating a more connected and unified approach to sustainability. Pitt would like to integrate sustainable best practices into all areas of the University operations, academics, research and public service.
Buro Happold is working closely with the leadership team at Pitt to define a vision, establish goals and objectives, KPIs, and create a roadmap for implementation.

Carnegie Mellon University, ANSYS Building

Designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ), the 36,000ft2, four-story ANSYS Building at Carnegie Mellon University will be geographically located at the heart of the College of Engineering. The building, funded by the engineering software company ANSYS, will connect the Graduate Maker Wing and the Scott Hall Nanofab Lab with an indoor-outdoor space to create a full Maker Space and increase the connectivity between the College of Engineering and the University.

Image: Pittsburgh skyline (© Feng Qu)

The opportunities available at Buro Happold and particularly the Pittsburgh office provide design professionals the chance to help Pittsburgh evolve from a factory economy to a carbon neutral economy with creative and innovative high performance building solutions.
John Shaw, Associate – Pittsburgh

Want to be part of the team?

At Buro Happold, we are always looking to hire the right people. We want to grow, and to do that best, we need the right people to help us move our business forward. Our business is our people. Come grow with Buro Happold. You can find our latest opportunities to join the team on our careers page.