Texas’s population growth is not slowing down, and neither is the traffic that comes with it. Cities like Houston and DFW keep growing further out, the Austin to San Antonio corridor keeps filling in, and a critical piece of infrastructure is being asked to grow, improve, and solve a problem every Texan knows well: traffic.
At Colliers Engineering & Design, that problem falls under the direction of Shaun Spivey, Geographic Discipline Leader of Traffic Planning, and the team he has built in Texas, backed by a national powerhouse of traffic resources. Spivey came to the field through an unusual route, deployed overseas as an Army combat engineer, driving on a road he considered poorly built when the idea struck him.
“I remember thinking, this is a terrible road, I could design a better road. Who designs roads?” he says. “So, when I got back to the US, I looked that up and found out what a civil engineer was.” That question sent him to school in San Antonio, where he has practiced transportation engineering, both analysis and design, ever since.
Building the Right Team
When Spivey joined Colliers Engineering & Design, the Texas traffic planning group started with one person in Austin. Today the team of five, brings a different specialty making the team stronger.
Sebastian Gonzales, the team’s traffic engineer in Austin, came in strong on analysis. Summer McGrew, a designer with four to five years of experience, filled the design gap, handling signals, turn lanes, and exhibits so Sebastian could focus on engineering. Mike Christoforakis, a licensed PE with six years across both analysis and design, came next, mentoring the two of them while taking work off Spivey’s plate. Most recently, Joseph Mikulencak joined to focus on 3D roadway modeling. The result is a team with distinct strengths and enough overlap to cover for one another, keeping projects moving smoothly and at a higher quality.
Rather than hiring people with identical skill sets, Spivey built a team where each member brings a distinct strength and overlapping knowledge, allowing them to cover for one another and deliver higher quality projects together.
From TIA’s to New Towns: What’s on the Team’s Plate?
Most of the team’s work starts with traffic impact analyses, or TIAs, for new commercial and residential developments, which frequently lead into signal design and turn lane design. Together, that work makes up roughly half of the team’s time.
The rest ranges widely. Site level studies like adding a second drive-through lane to stop traffic from backing onto the street, and traffic control plans that keep downtown Houston streets moving during utility construction next to a hospital. On the municipal side, the team is laying out roadways and building a transportation model for a brand new town in South Texas, working alongside the firm’s Municipal group on the roadway design and signal work to come.
“Having a traffic team in-house is a big advantage for our municipal clients,” says Chris Otto, Regional Discipline Leader for Municipal services. “Instead of going to an outside firm and waiting on their schedule, we can walk down the hall, work through questions directly with Shaun’s team, get practical answers quickly, and keep the overall project moving forward.”
Data centers have also become a distinct project type, generating very little traffic once operational but a surge of it during construction, especially once wiring begins, which agencies like TxDOT increasingly want studied. Looking ahead, the team is also tracking electric vehicle charging stations and autonomous vehicles, as some cities begin experimenting with traffic signals that can communicate directly with self-driving cars to make intersections safer.
Faster Answers, Lower Costs: The Multi-discipline Advantage
The Texas traffic team is small, but it draws on a much larger bench. “We have a small team here, but we have a big team nationally,” Spivey says. “Chances are somebody in our group has seen it, and we can reach out and figure that out.”
Unlike many firms that specialize narrowly in either analysis or design, the traffic team does both, understanding how each affects the other. Team members who complete a TIA have also produced the construction plans that follow it, sharpening both while keeping overall costs down. That collaboration extends across disciplines in house too, from drainage to municipal to land development, so clients get faster answers without the cost or delay of an outside firm.