ODESSA, TX — The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announces the appointment of Eric L. Lykins, PE, as the department’s Senior Director of District Operations.

Lykins brings more than 30 years of 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 the Assistant Area Engineer in the Brownwood Area Office, where he oversaw the office’s 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 as the Odessa District Engineer, overseeing a 12-county region in the Permian Basin — one of the nation’s most prolific oil and gas areas. As the Odessa District Engineer, Lykins has been responsible for overseeing the district’s annual $4 billion UTP and guiding the direction of 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, and in 2025 recorded their highest pavement and bridge condition score in almost a decade.