HED Accelerates Innovation and Impact: Celebrating 2025 Achievements, Shaping the Future of Integrated Design

CHICAGO, Dec. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The past year in architecture and engineering unfolded like a study in accelerating expectations. Schools, hospitals, and laboratories demanded flexibility that could stretch across futures both known and imagined. Workplaces wrestled with the promises and pressures of artificial intelligence. Data Centers surged at a scale few predicted, prompting urgent conversations about power, resilience, and the ecological responsibilities that accompany digital expansion.

Through it all, HED, an integrated architecture and engineering company, leaned into the complexity, advancing an integrated design practice that reframes sustainability as something deeper than a checklist. The firm approached it instead as an ongoing dialogue of efficiency and care with architecture that evolves alongside the people and communities it serves.

A Year of Momentum

The firm strengthened its position in 2025 as a forerunner in integrated design, blurring the boundaries that once separated disciplines. Architects, engineers, planners, and designers moved as one unit, not passing the baton but shaping solutions in synchrony and in real time, with a model that continues to sharpen project predictability, elevate design, and create room for imaginative exploration.

Awards & Achievements

This was also a year of business growth for the company, marked by an elevated ranking of #21 in Business Design + Construction's list of Top 100 Architecture Engineering Firms for 2025. Additional awards and achievements for the company include:

• Recognized as one of the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For nationwide.
• Advanced to #204 on ENR's Top 500 Design Firms list.
• Ranked #117 on Crain's Detroit Private 200 list of largest privately held companies.
• Multiple regional recognitions as a Best Place to Work across Los Angeles, El Segundo, Orange, and San Diego.
• BD+C Giants 400 Report rankings, including #8 in Data Center Architecture Engineering Firms and #20 in University Building Architecture Firms, with notable upward movement across several categories.

Notable project awards and recognition include:

• Five national and regional honors for the Michigan Technological University H-STEM Complex, including awards from ACEC Michigan, ACEC National, the Illuminating Engineering Society, Construction Association of Michigan Magazine, and the Engineering Society of Detroit.
• Engineering Merit Award from ACEC Michigan for Wacker Chemical Headquarters.
• CMAA Southern California Project Achievement Award for Saddleback College Gateway Building.
• AIA San Diego Merit Award for MiraCosta College Chemistry and Biotechnology Building.
• Phius Passive Projects Design Competition Honorable Mention for Conservatory Apartments.
• SCANPH "Homes Within Reach" Award for Thatcher Yard Senior Housing.
• Chicago Athenaeum's American Architecture Award and the Westside Urban Forum Award for the SAMOHI Exploration Building and Gymnasium.
• A4LE Peak Merit Award for the Regis Jesuit High School Science and Innovation Center.

Leadership and Talent

The firm welcomed new leaders and expanded its expertise across sectors. To strengthen healthcare design in the Northeast, HED appointed Noelia Bitar in Boston, joining forces with Ronda Paradis to deepen the firm's presence in a region undergoing rapid transformation. In Dallas, the addition of Vandana Gupta reinforced an already flourishing Higher Education practice. And in a firmwide move that reflects HED's commitment to unifying design excellence across markets, Ralph Mocerino joined to support the company's business leaders in accelerating growth within the markets.

2026 Vision: HED is Approaching the New Year with Confidence

As 2026 approaches, HED is focused not simply on forecasting trends but on interrogating the horizon itself. The firm is looking beyond the immediate to explore how resilience, technology, and empathetic, human-centered design can support systems under increasing strain.

The questions ahead are complex. HED meets them with curiosity and confidence, using integrated design as both method and mindset to prepare clients for the futures they can see and the ones just beginning to take shape.

Join the conversation at hed.co.

About HED

HED delivers architecture and engineering excellence through integrated and all-encompassing design. They leverage imagination, purpose, process, and advocacy to create efficient, sustainable, and responsive solutions to their clients' evolving needs. As one of the top 200 design firms in the U.S., HED serves clients in healthcare, education (higher education and Pre K-12), mission-critical, housing/mixed-use, science, advanced manufacturing, workplace, community, and the federal government. The firm's diverse team of 400+ professionals operates in every time zone nationwide to consistently produce award-winning projects and designs. To learn more about what they can help you achieve, visit www.hed.co.

Contact: HED Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE HED