Our Story

Aurora Technical Services, LLC is a Houston-based civil engineering consulting firm. Owned and operated by Rafael Ortega, PE, Aurora was founded to provide its clients with cost-effective solutions that work resulting from more than 40 years of proven, hands-on experience serving clients from California to Florida and from the Great Lakes to Texas. Mr. Ortega is nationally known as one of the leading engineers in pipeline engineering and has spent his entire career serving municipalities and agencies on some of the complicated capital improvement projects most importantly here in the greater Houston area.

For more than 35 years, Rafael led the team serving the City of Houston’s multi-year, multiphase, multi-million-dollar Surface Water Transmission Program (SWTP) and oversaw the design of more than 500 miles of large diameter pipelines including nearly 100 miles of tunnels. This work has included performing the route alignment studies for all the SWTP projects, development of project-specific phasing plans to maximize local contracting capability while at the same time mitigating potential operational impacts, detail design including development of project-specific details, coordination with the overlapping governmental agencies, creating technical specifications, coordination with the general public in order to address community concerns, and constructability reviews.

Founded in 2015, Aurora has grown and provided full-service engineering, consulting, and construction management work serving public infrastructure projects for cities, counties, and other public agencies. Representative areas of engineering expertise in water, wastewater and construction field services include:


Our Commitment

Aurora was built to serve the technical needs of its clients. It continues to grow by earning the trust of these clients, who return for their professional engineering needs. We are committed to exceeding your expectations and delivering the superior technical services Aurora has become known for.

“Our values are what allow us to serve our clients.

Doing the right thing is what Aurora was founded on, and it is absolutely the secret to our success.”

Rafael Ortega, President

Rafael Ortega, PE; President