Steel-Free Caissons to Tunnels 250 Feet Down: Inside Stiver Engineering’s Work
Oct 9, 2026
Houston-based Stiver Engineering designs the temporary and permanent works behind complex underground projects, from caissons built without steel reinforcement to deep rock tunnels beneath Indianapolis, as aging U.S. water systems push more of the nation’s construction below ground.
Houston, United States, October 9, 2026 /NewsNetwork/ -- A Houston testing facility needed large caissons that would not interfere with the subsea products tested inside them, which meant no steel reinforcement. In Indianapolis, the DigIndy program called for a network of 18-foot-diameter rock tunnels nearly 28 miles long, built 250 feet beneath the city. Stiver Engineering, a civil engineering firm that works exclusively in design, engineered the caisson solution for the Houston facility and contributed design work to DigIndy’s Deep Rock Tunnel Connector Pump Station.
The two jobs sit at opposite ends of the scale, yet they share a common thread. Each required a design team able to cover several disciplines at once, including shaft, dewatering, structural, and construction engineering, on ground conditions that leave little room for error. Stiver Engineering groups that capability into nine design services, outlined at https://stiverengineering.com/civil-engineering-services/, covering shoring, dewatering, tunnels, shafts, water engineering, structural design, construction engineering, land development and wastewater systems.
Demand for that kind of work continues to build. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, released in March 2025, graded the nation’s drinking water systems a C-, stormwater a D, and wastewater a D+, with all three grades unchanged from 2021. Much of the repair and expansion behind those grades happens underground, through tunnels, shafts and deep excavations that general contractors cannot build without engineered support.
Stiver Engineering’s clients fall into three main sectors.
Government and defense work calls for rapid-delivery designs on critical structures, including tunnel access, rescue shafts and subterranean and subsea structures.
Public and civil infrastructure accounts for much of the firm’s water work. Project credits include the City of Houston’s Northeast Water Purification Plant expansion, a design-build program planned to add 320 million gallons per day of capacity; the $142 million Schoharie Reservoir project in Gilboa, New York; and the Mill Creek Drainage Relief Tunnel in Dallas, which includes 26,385 linear feet of tunneling.
Commercial and industrial clients rely most on structural design, described at https://stiverengineering.com/structural-design/, for buildings and facilities where integrity and safety requirements drive the engineering. The private Houston subsea testing facility, with its steel-free caissons, is one example.
Across all three sectors, contractors often bring in Stiver Engineering for construction engineering, temporary works, and field-support design that connects a project’s plans to what crews actually build. That service, detailed at https://stiverengineering.com/construction-engineering-design/, covers the shoring, access and support systems that make excavation and tunneling possible but rarely remain visible once a project is finished.
The firm’s client base reflects that focus. It includes government contractors, utility contractors, tunnel and shoring contractors, caisson contractors, lift and pump station contractors, soil nail contractors and sheet pile contractors.
“We are driven by a passion for getting the job done. Every challenge presents an opportunity for innovation, and we embrace those challenges by engineering unique solutions that ensure our clients’ success,” said John Stiver of Stiver Engineering.
About Stiver Engineering: Stiver Engineering is a Houston-based civil engineering firm specializing exclusively in design for heavy-civil, underground, and water infrastructure projects across the United States. More information about the firm is available at https://stiverengineering.com/about-civil-engineering-company/.
Contact Info:
Name: John Stiver
Email: Send Email
Organization: Stiver Engineering, Inc.
Address: 1305 Peden St., Houston, Texas 77006, United States
Phone: +1-713-526-3478
Website: https://stiverengineering.com
Source: NewsNetwork
Release ID: 89205745
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