About Burns & McDonnell Engineering Kansas

Burns & McDonnell Engineering, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, has operated throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area — including Kansas City, Kansas — for over a century. As one of the nation’s largest engineering, architecture, construction, and environmental services firms, Burns & McDonnell designed, built, and managed projects across industries where asbestos-containing materials were reportedly used as standard practice throughout much of the twentieth century.

Clinton Burns and Robert McDonnell founded the firm in 1898 in Kansas City. What began as a small civil engineering partnership grew into one of the most influential construction and engineering enterprises in the country, with documented expertise in electrical power generation and transmission, oil and gas infrastructure, industrial process facilities, environmental engineering, and large-scale commercial construction. Corporate headquarters have long been in Kansas City, Missouri. Burns & McDonnell has maintained substantial project presence throughout Kansas City, Kansas, and across the state for generations.

Burns & McDonnell reportedly designed, engineered, or managed construction at major industrial facilities throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area and beyond, including utility substations and transmission projects serving Kansas City Power & Light and predecessor entities throughout northeastern Kansas, the Coffeyville Resources refinery (Coffeyville, Kansas), Boeing Wichita (Wichita, Kansas), Cessna Aircraft (Wichita, Kansas), and Beechcraft (Wichita, Kansas).

Kansas City, Kansas, built its industrial identity on meat packing, steel, petroleum refining, and chemical manufacturing — one of the most industrially dense corridors in the central United States. The greater Kansas City metropolitan region became home to some of the nation’s largest refineries, steel mills, chemical plants, and power generation facilities. Burns & McDonnell, as the region’s dominant engineering firm, reportedly designed and built facilities throughout this corridor. Power generation facilities rank among the most asbestos-intensive industrial environments ever constructed, with facilities built largely between the 1950s and 1970s remaining in service for decades.

General Equipment at Burns & McDonnell Engineering Kansas

The equipment below represents the systems and infrastructure documented or typically present at this facility during the era when asbestos-containing materials were specified in industrial construction. This is general facility-equipment reference — not a legal attribution of any specific product, manufacturer, or exposure event to this facility. Material-category and manufacturer information is addressed in the AsbestosIndex Product Crosswalk linked under the records table below.

Industrial Boilers View crosswalk › Process Piping View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Block Insulation View crosswalk › Valves View crosswalk › Gaskets View crosswalk › Pumps View crosswalk › Heat Exchangers View crosswalk › Cooling Equipment View crosswalk ›

Documented Asbestos Evidence — Kansas

The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) was notified under federal NESHAP rules, the work was logged, and the asbestos-containing material was confirmed and removed under regulated conditions. These are not allegations or estimates — they are paper records tying documented asbestos-containing material to this specific site.

No KDHE NESHAP abatement notifications have been identified for this facility in current public records. Per the framing above, absence of state-agency documentation should not be read as absence of asbestos — only as absence of a formal, regulated abatement event meeting reporting thresholds. Workers who recall encountering pipe insulation, block insulation, gaskets, or other asbestos-era construction materials at this facility may still have viable claims regardless of whether a state record exists.

Material Categories in Documented Records

The materials documented above (and similar asbestos-containing materials commonly encountered in records of this type) appear in the AsbestosIndex catalog with historical manufacturer and trust-fund information. Click a category to view manufacturers historically associated with that material:

Thermal System Insulation View crosswalk › Asbestos-Cement Board View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Roofing & Flashing View crosswalk › Spray Fireproofing View crosswalk › Floor Tile & Mastic View crosswalk › Ceiling Tile View crosswalk › Gaskets & Packing View crosswalk ›

Who May Have Been Exposed at Burns & McDonnell Engineering Kansas

Workers employed directly by Burns & McDonnell — and workers employed by subcontractors on Burns & McDonnell-managed projects, including members of IBEW Local 226, Asbestos Workers Local 24, Pipefitters Local 441, and Boilermakers Local 83 KC — may have worked alongside asbestos-containing materials in utility boiler rooms, pipe chases, turbine halls, control buildings, industrial process areas, refinery process units, and chemical manufacturing facilities.

Workers at power generation facilities may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials including high-pressure steam pipe insulation in turbine halls and boiler rooms, steam drum insulation, turbine and generator insulation, insulating boards and sheets in control buildings, and boiler refractory and insulating cements containing asbestos. Workers — including members of Asbestos Workers Local 24 and Pipefitters Local 441 — may have been exposed to legacy asbestos-containing materials during maintenance, repair, and renovation activities well into the 1990s and 2000s. At petroleum refinery sites, workers may have encountered asbestos-containing materials in refinery piping insulation, process unit insulation, and packing and gasket materials used throughout valve, pump, and flange connections. At aerospace and industrial manufacturing facilities in Wichita, workers may have encountered asbestos-containing materials in structural fireproofing on steel frames, mechanical system insulation, and floor and ceiling materials, with workers who performed renovation, demolition, or maintenance at these facilities after original construction potentially exposed to asbestos-containing materials that had been in place for decades.

Kansas — Filing Deadline & Next Steps

Kansas law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 2 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (K.S.A. § 60-513). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 2 years from the date of death (K.S.A. § 60-1903). The two deadlines run on separate tracks — preserving one does not extend the other.

The personal-injury clock runs from diagnosis, not from exposure. Mesothelioma latency is typically 20 to 50 years, so workers exposed in the 1950s–1980s are being diagnosed today.

Practical first steps

  1. Document what you remember. Pay stubs, W-2s, union cards, photographs, coworker names, and dates of employment. The WorkChain widget on this page can save a copy you can email yourself.
  2. Preserve medical records. Pathology reports, biopsy results, imaging, and pulmonary-function tests are central to both civil claims and trust-fund filings.
  3. Identify household members. Spouses who laundered work clothing and children of plant workers are eligible for secondary-exposure claims when diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease.
  4. Speak with an asbestos attorney with Kansas experience. The first conversation is free and confidential. Asbestos trust-fund claims and civil claims run on different tracks — both can be pursued in parallel.
Asbestos-Related Diseases — Kansas

Asbestos fiber exposure can cause several specific diseases that typically appear decades after the original exposure. The latency period — the gap between exposure and diagnosis — usually runs 20 to 50 years. That's why workers exposed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are receiving diagnoses today.

Mesothelioma

A rare, aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the lungs (pleural mesothelioma), abdomen (peritoneal), or heart (pericardial). Mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure, which is why a mesothelioma diagnosis often points directly to historical workplace exposure. Average latency from first exposure to diagnosis is 30-50 years.

Asbestosis

A chronic, non-cancerous scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaled asbestos fibers. Asbestosis causes progressive shortness of breath, persistent cough, and reduced lung function. It does not improve with treatment, and it is a recognized basis for a claim under most trust schedules and civil claims.

Lung Cancer

Asbestos exposure significantly increases the risk of lung cancer, particularly when combined with a history of smoking. Asbestos-related lung cancer is compensable under the same trust schedules and civil claim avenues as mesothelioma.

Other Recognized Diseases

Pleural plaques, pleural thickening, laryngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, and certain gastrointestinal cancers are also recognized as asbestos-related under various trust schedules and case-law authorities, though eligibility and proof requirements vary by claim type.

If you have any of these diagnoses and you worked at this facility, lived with someone who did, or were exposed in any documented capacity, you may have a claim worth pursuing. Speak with an attorney before assuming you don't qualify.

Data Sources — Kansas

Information about facility equipment, industrial materials, and occupational records referenced on this page is drawn from publicly available sources where applicable, including:

If specific equipment or product claims in this article are sourced from a non-public database, the source is identified parenthetically within the text above.