Senior Director of District Operations
Eric Lykins, P.E., serves as Senior Director of District Operations. In this role, he is responsible for the management and control of all 25 districts.
Lykins brings more than 30 years of progressive leadership experience to the position. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Texas Tech University in 1994 and began his career with an engineering consulting firm serving over 28 municipalities across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles and southwest Kansas.
He joined TxDOT in 1998 as an engineering assistant in the Brownwood District. After earning his professional engineering license in 2000, he became Assistant Area Engineer in the Brownwood Area Office, where he oversaw the offices construction projects for the next decade. Lykins became the Brownwood Area Engineer in 2010, a position he held for the next two years. In 2012, he was named Director of Construction, a role he held for six years while also serving as the District’s Business Service Coordinator and Lab Engineer. Lykins was named the Brownwood Director of Operations in 2018 where he guided the district’s traffic and maintenance operations along with leading the district’s emergency response operations.
In 2022, Lykins was appointed Odessa District Engineer, overseeing a 12-county region in the Permian Basin—one of the nation’s most prolific oil and gas areas. As Odessa District Engineer, Lykins has been responsible for overseeing the district’s annual $4 billion UTP and guiding the direction on the District’s more than 55 active construction projects totaling in excess of $1.5 billion of construction. Under Lykins’ leadership the Odessa District recorded their lowest traffic fatality rate in over a decade in 2023, had their highest annual letting in 2024 of $550 million followed up in 2025 with the district recording their highest pavement and bridge condition score in almost a decade. Lykins innovative initiatives such as the “Basin20”, a first-of-its-kind travel time and queue warning system using connected vehicle data. He also led the launch of the HERO program in partnership with Midland County and the Permian Strategic Partnership—making Odessa the first non-metropolitan area to implement this roadside assistance service. While in Odessa, Lykins has served on various boards and committees including serving on the Permian Basin MPO and the Permian Road Safety Coalition policy boards.
