David (Dave) M. Schnurbusch, co-founder, president, CEO, and chair of Dallas-based USA Professional Services Group Inc., 1998 Texas Section president, and ASCE Region 6 director from 2007 to 2010, has died. He was 69.
Schnurbusch, P.E., F.ASCE, was highly regarded throughout Texas for designing some of the state’s most desirable master-planned communities and sustainable, high-profile infrastructure projects.
In addition to his term as Texas Section president in 1998 and Region 6 tenure on ASCE’s board of direction, Schnurbusch’s activities included chair of the section’s nominating committee, chair and trustee of the John B. Hawley Memorial Fund, founding president, trustee, and member of the executive committee of the Texas Civil Engineering Foundation, and chair of the Region 6 Board of Governors.
For more than 43 years, his firm provided land developers and municipalities with expertise to ensure that they were getting the most from their budgets. A highlight of his early career was work with the Raymond L. Goodson firm in Dallas (now RLG) before he and a colleague, Paul S. Unzicker, launched Unzicker, Schnurbusch & Associates, Inc., in 1982, later renamed USA Professional Services.
To deliver the most creative, marketable, and cost-effective projects possible, Schnurbusch listened to the legacy a city or developer wanted to achieve. USA Professional Services designed more than one million single-family lots, multifamily units, and other arrangements, and developed a reputation for attention to detail throughout a project to its completion.
Schnurbusch was a native of Binghamton, N.Y. Attending the University of Vermont on a football scholarship, he graduated in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. A great job market for civil engineers in Dallas lured him to Texas shortly thereafter.
He was an ASCE life member, the Texas Section’s 1990 Young Engineer of the Year and the 1998 Civil Engineer of the Year. Schnurbusch received the Texas Professional Service Award in 1997 from then-Governor George W. Bush. He also was given the Award of Honor in 2003.
Schnurbusch held season tickets for the Dallas Cowboys on the 50-yard line and recently attended the team’s first home win of 2025. Those who knew him will always remember a loving father, friend, and colleague.
