LCCP would like to extend our warmest congratulations to our good friend Eddie Martinez of Zia Engineering. It is a privilege to have you on the Las Cruces Community Partners team, and it is a pleasure to work with you to improve our great city!
You can read more about Eddie from the El Paso Times 04/19/2015, Page E01
Consultants have long history, see bright future
By Alexia Severson
LASCRUCES>> Raised in Las Vegas, N.M., Edward Martinez moved to Las Cruces to study civil engineering at New Mexico State University. After working for consulting firms in Las Cruces throughout the 80s, he later took a job in Las Vegas, Nev., where he lived for about eight years. But something was missing.
“What I realized is that everything in Vegas was new,” Martinez said. “Most of the city had been built within the last 30 years and coming from New Mexico, you’re used to a culture that goes back centuries.”
So Martinez started looking for a way to move back to Las Cruces. That opportunity presented itself when an engineering firm called Terracon offered Martinez a position in which he would open up offices for the company in New Mexico.
About three years later, in March 2000, Martinez decided to start an engineering firm of his own called Zia Engineering & Environmental Consultants, LLC., located at 755 S. Telshor Blvd., Suite F-201, where the firm is currently located.
“I started Zia (Engineering) mostly doing environmental consulting and some engineering services throughout the western U.S. right from the get-go,” said Martinez, president and CEO of Zia Engineering. “By the end of the first year, I had four or five employees and by the third year, I think we had 15 or so.”
The firm now has about 70 employees in Zia Engineering offices throughout the U.S., including Albuquerque, El Paso and Iowa, as well as clients ranging from small, private, industrial, local and state agencies to large federal contracts on military installations, according to Martinez and the Zia Engineering website.
Martinez said one of the things that makes his firm unique is that from the start, Zia Engineering has been set up as if it were a big company.
“The product we put out and the type of work we did right from the get-go was more typical of engineering firms that were substantially bigger than us,” he
Zia Engineering President Edward Martinez, a NMSU engineering graduate, sits in his office with blueprints. Martinez opened his business in 2000. The company has since grown to a staff of more than 70 employees in locations throughout the country.
said. “And yet, at the same time, we were able to be more cost competitive because we were small, and that’s still kind of the intent in the way we structure things. We have the general capability to give the flavor of a much larger company.”
Martinez said Zia Engineering has several projects in the works, including two local high profile projects.
“One is the (Downtown) plaza project and we’re doing the civil design work associated with that and we’re very integrated into that project,” he said. “We’re also the engineers for the redevelopment of the old Las Cruces Country Club (the Park Ridge project).”
The Downtown plaza will be located on Main Street, off Griggs Avenue, across from the Rio Grande Theatre, next to the Bank of the West and will include a roofed stage on the south end, a sundial feature in the middle and a water splash pad on the north end, according to downtown- redevelopment.com.
Martinez said he hopes construction associated with the plaza project will begin in the next few months.
“Once we start, I would envision no more than 14 or 15 months for it to be completely done, if not sooner,” he said. “There’s a lot of moving parts associated with it, but we’re basically at the end game now.”
As part of the downtown redevelopment, Martinez said he has plans to move the Las Cruces Zia Engineering corporate office into the Bank of the West building Downtown sometime this fall.
“We believe in Downtown and with City Hall right there and with what we do, it’s just, in the longterm, a better location,” he said.
Martinez said he is amazed that Zia Engineering has been going for 15 years. “It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long and I’m very proud that we’ve made it to this milestone,” he said. “I don’t see by any means that this it. I think there’s definitely still a lot that we want to accomplish, a lot that we want to do and we want to continue to grow.”
Martinez said one of his proudest accomplishments since starting Zia Engineering is getting to work with such a close-knit and talented staff.
“One guy started with me as a technician and now he’s an engineer, and in the time that he’s been with me, he’s gotten married, had three kids and one of them is getting ready to go off to college,” he said. “I have another employee who started with me as a receptionist … and she just got her Professional Engineering Registration and she’s turned into this amazing woman.”
Outside of the office
Outside of his work at Zia Engineering, Martinez said he enjoys spending time outdoors and staying active by going running, participating in triathlons, playing golf, mountain biking, hiking and fly fishing. He also enjoys reading.