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HOUSTON (May 30, 2017) — With a continued focus on strengthening and building the electrical infrastructure in the South, Burns & McDonnell — ranked the No. 1 firm in electrical power and transmission and distribution by Engineering News-Record — hires Ravikanth Varanasi to lead a regional business consulting services team and support utility clients across Texas. 

“Ravikanth has worked for and with major U.S. utility companies, giving him a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and perspectives,” says Allen Xi, Burns & McDonnell senior vice president and regional transmission and distribution group manager. “Whether its maintaining environmental compliance while minimizing costs, predicting future loads on a utility system or incorporating new technologies and upgrading equipment, our firm is uniquely positioned to support each need. Ravikanth’s breadth of technical experience in the power industry and consulting make him a perfect fit to lead our growing business consulting team in Houston.”

Varanasi has more than 15 years of experience in transmission planning and development, utility system planning, transmission studies consulting, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) compliance, energy policy, transmission regulatory affairs, energy price forecasting and power markets modeling. 

“With an increase in renewable energy resources, ever-changing regulations and an aging electrical infrastructure, it’s more important than ever before for utilities to have cost-effective enhancements, innovative designs and strong operations management,” says Varanasi. “I’m passionate about leveraging my experience to help clients tackle each challenge.”

Varanasi is a licensed professional engineer in Washington. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics from the National Institute of Technology-Karnataka and a master’s degree in electric power engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

About Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is a family of companies made up of more than 5,700 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs with offices across the country and throughout the world. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be No. 16 on Fortune’s 2017 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For.