Best Retaining Wall Engineers in Dallas Fort Worth

How Were These Firms Chosen and Checked?

We searched the web on October 17, 2026 for retaining wall engineers in Dallas Fort Worth, including the tracked question "Need a retaining wall design engineer in the DFW area, who should I call?". We kept engineering firms that have a site of their own and a page that mentions retaining walls, which gave 8 candidates besides HGS Engineering. 3 were left out: Structural Engineer Dallas (its site answered our request with a bot check page, so we read nothing from it); A & L Engineering and Consulting (we found a directory listing under retaining walls but no site of its own to read); W. Tom Witherspoon, Consulting Engineer (its roster row is in Richardson and a directory lists retaining wall design, but we found no site of its own to read). Contractors that build walls were not listed, because the question is who designs them. A firm we did not find is not on the list, and that is a limit of the method, not a verdict.

Each listed firm is read against nine criteria in three groups. A criterion is met or it is not, and nothing is added up, so the firms run in alphabetical order.

Anyone can rerun the script on the saved pages and get the table below. A cell reads "Not published" when the evidence page did not answer a curl request with a 200 on October 17, 2026. The result reflects only the pages we read. A firm with a stronger page we did not read could meet more.

How Do the Six Firms Compare?

HGS Engineering meets all nine criteria, and that deserves a plain look, since HGS Engineering wrote them. Meeting every one does not measure the quality of the engineering, which no page can show. HGS Engineering also has two pages in the count, the service page and a post, against one page for most others, and more text gives more chances to name an item. That is why the table ends with a row of things HGS Engineering does not do. Nortex Structural also meets all nine.

Only 2 of the six, Lev Engineering and RSH Engineering and Construction, show a construction business in the name registered with the Board, and that is where column 9 reads not met. 3 of the six name drainage on their wall pages and 3 name sealed plans or permits.

The Six Firms, One at a Time

Each entry gives what the firm's own page says, read on October 17, 2026 and fetched again with curl on October 17, 2026. Where a claim comes from the firm and could not be checked, the entry says so.

Barney Ballard Engineering

Best for: an owner near Burleson whose wall holds up a foundation, a driveway or a pool.

Barney Ballard Engineering prints Registered Firm F-48 on its page, matching the Board row for Barney Ballard Corporation in Burleson. The page is headed Structural Wall Design (Retaining). It claims more than 40 years of experience. It also warns that excess water can contribute to structural failure of a wall. It runs about 200 words and names no wall types, soil work or sealed plans, so it meets few of the scope criteria. That says something about the page, not the engineer.

Source: Barney Ballard Engineering, Structural wall design page, checked October 17, 2026, status 200.

Falkofske Engineering

Best for: a sloped lot or a property line where the wall may need soldier piles or tiebacks.

Falkofske Engineering is on North Fielder Road in Arlington, matching its roster row. Its wall page covers masonry stone gravity, segmental block (MSE), concrete, soldier pile with or without tiebacks, gabion, reinforced soil slopes and wall repair. It designs for firelane and building surcharges and for walls on property lines, and it pairs wall design with slope stability. The page never mentions sealed plans, permits or drainage, and it names no Dallas, Fort Worth or North Texas service area on the page, only an Arlington address in the footer, which is where it misses the fit criterion on place names.

Source: Falkofske Engineering, Retaining wall design page, checked October 17, 2026, status 200.

HGS Engineering

Best for: an owner who needs sealed plans for a new wall, or an engineer's findings on a wall that has already moved.

HGS Engineering publishes this list and is based in Arlington. On its retaining wall page, Heath Salmon, PE seals the design plans for new walls in Texas and Oklahoma. For a wall that has already moved, cracked or lost its footing, the firm writes up an evaluation, and that work covers North Texas. A set of plans fixes the wall type, the footing size, the steel and the drainage. Its two pages in the count are the service page and a post on code-compliant wall design.

Source: the retaining walls page and the post on code-compliant wall design, checked October 17, 2026, status 200 and 200.

Lev Engineering

Best for: an owner with a retaining wall as one part of a larger structural project.

Lev Engineering is based in Plano and says it serves the entire DFW metroplex. Its home page lists retaining walls and site structures in a row of project types, beside structural steel and reinforced concrete, and its Fort Worth page does not mention retaining walls at all. We found no page on the site about walls, which is why it meets none of the scope criteria. Its footer prints firm F-24377, matching the roster, and the registered name ends in Lev Engineering and Construction.

Source: Lev Engineering, Home page, checked October 17, 2026, status 200 and 200.

Nortex Structural

Best for: a homeowner or builder choosing between wall types before the design starts.

Nortex Structural is registered in Keller and prints firm number F-22739, which matches the Board roster. Its wall page walks through five types: gabion, concrete masonry unit, stone gravity, concrete cantilever and timber tie. Walls above 4 feet, it says, are generally treated as structural. It states that stone gravity is the most common wall type in North Texas, a claim we could not check. The page also calls its team the top structural engineers in Dallas and Fort Worth, which we could not check and did not test. It says Nortex can design and build walls, and only its registered name, which has no construction business in it, was tested.

Source: Nortex Structural, Retaining wall design page, checked October 17, 2026, status 200.

RSH Engineering and Construction

Best for: an owner who wants one company to design, permit and build a patio or garden wall.

RSH Engineering and Construction is registered in Mesquite under the name RSH Engineering Inc DBA RSH Construction/Hesed Construction. Its retaining wall page is written by a concrete contractor: it offers free estimates, design, permits, drainage and installation, and talks about shapes, sizes, materials and colors for outdoor living spaces. It does not describe an engineer's calculations or a sealed drawing. The firm's site elsewhere says its team includes Professional Engineers, but the wall page is a construction page, and the registered name carries a construction business, so criterion 9 reads not met.

Source: RSH Engineering and Construction, Retaining wall page, checked October 17, 2026, status 200.

Does the Ground Under the Wall Change the Choice?

It changes what the engineer has to design for, which is why soil and slope are among the five scope items. We matched six North Texas counties to the nearest weather station in the files behind our county pages. In Collin County, 74.5% of the rated soil by acre is high or very high for shrink-swell. In Parker County it is 9.3%.

Heavy rain days range from 9.5 at Mineral Wells Ap to 12 at Dallas Love Fld. The county figures average thousands of acres. They are not a reading of your lot, so use them to decide what to ask an engineer. The foundation data section carries the county soil pages behind these numbers.

What Should You Check Before You Hire Any Firm?

Three checks take ten minutes and apply to every name above, including ours.

1. Look the firm up on the Board's firm search and read the expiry date. A registered firm may offer engineering, which is not the same as designing walls, so ask for a wall like yours.
2. Ask what you get on paper. The code section behind the 48 inch trigger asks for stability against overturning, sliding, bearing pressure and water uplift. Your permit office will want sealed plans that show it.
3. Ask who builds the wall. Read the registered name on the roster, not just the site menu, then decide if you want the designer and the builder to be one company.

A wall that has already moved reverses the order: evaluation first. See the retaining wall page for how HGS Engineering handles one.

How Were These Numbers Made?

Method: scripts/list-status.py fetches each evidence page with curl and saves the status under data/public/list-status/. scripts/rw-list.py reads the Texas Board roster file saved as data/public/tbpels/firm_roster-2026-10-16.csv and the visible text of each firm's retaining wall pages saved under data/public/retaining-firms/, then writes rw-metrics.json, and the page prints each criterion as met or not met. The five scope items are fixed patterns in the script. The county table comes from data/public/soil/county-shrink-swell.json and the NOAA normals files already committed for the city pages. Before each build a gate reruns the script and fails on any mismatch with what this page prints.