A San Diego firm built for the hard projects
Kruer Engineering Construction is a California A licensed General Engineering Contractor and a women owned and minority owned business. We have been building and pricing heavy civil work in Southern California since 1994.
The firm does two things: we build civil and site work as a contractor, and we advise owners on cost, schedule, and risk. On any single project we do one or the other.
Who we are
The firm was founded in 1994 as JT Kruer General Engineering Construction and operates today as Kruer Engineering Construction. Over three decades we have built a practice around a specific and uncomfortable question: what will this project actually cost, and what has to be true for that number to hold?
Kruer Engineering Construction is a women owned and minority owned business, certified as a Women Business Enterprise and a Minority Business Enterprise. On projects carrying participation goals we count toward them while performing the construction ourselves rather than passing it through.
Our clients are national homebuilders, regional land developers, industrial and energy companies, public agencies, water districts, ports, institutional owners, lenders, and the law firms that represent them. What they share is exposure. Each of them is committing capital or public funds against a construction estimate, and each of them needs that estimate to be defensible.
What we do
We build. Under our California A license we bid, contract, and construct heavy civil and site work: grading and earthwork, site development, wet and dry utilities, pipelines, storm drain and drainage, roadway and paving, slope and retaining structures, demolition, and design-build civil delivery. See construction.
We advise. We also provide preconstruction, construction management, owner's representation, program management, cost estimating, CPM scheduling, claims analysis, and expert witness testimony to owners and their counsel. See advisory services.
The through line is judgment about physical work. We are not a staffing agency and we are not a design firm. We are builders, and on the projects where we are not building we bring a builder's judgment to the owner's side.
One role per project
We do not act as both contractor and construction manager on the same job. A construction manager's value to an owner comes entirely from being independent of whoever holds the construction contract, and an owner who lets one firm do both has bought a check that cannot check anything. So we ask early which role you need.
How we are different
Three things separate us from the typical civil contractor and from the typical construction consultant.
- We hold a contractor's license and use it, so we have carried the risk we ask others to price
- We build estimates from project specific takeoffs, geology, and local market conditions rather than from cost per square foot benchmarks
- We are independent of any design firm, so the advice we give about a set of drawings has no downstream fee attached to it
The name change and the licenses
In recognition of the firm's broader engineering construction practice, JT Kruer General Engineering Construction now operates as Kruer Engineering Construction. The entity, the leadership, and the project history are unchanged. Clients with existing agreements do not need to take any action.
Our current California A General Engineering Contractor license is #1083980. The firm's original license, #777345, issued in 1994, remains active. Both can be verified through the Contractors State License Board.
- Legal name
- Kruer Engineering Construction
- Formerly
- JT Kruer General Engineering Construction
- Also known as
- J.T. Kruer and Company
- Founded
- 1994
- License
- California A General Engineering Contractor #1083980
- Headquarters
- 3645 Ruffin Road, Suite 101, San Diego, CA 92123
- Phone
- 858.550.0044
- Fax
- 858.550.0404
- Written contact
- Use our contact form
- What we build
- Grading, site development, utilities, pipelines, drainage, roadway, paving
- Primary markets
- Public works, infrastructure, master planned communities, commercial, industrial, water, energy
- Service area
- San Diego and Southern California, with selected national and international assignments
Three commitments we make on every engagement
Real costs
We will give you the number we believe, not the number that makes the project easier to approve. If a budget will not survive bid day, you should hear it from us months before the bids open.
Feasible scenarios
Every recommendation we make has to be buildable by a real contractor, permittable by a real agency, and financeable on a real schedule. Elegant plans that cannot be executed are worse than no plan.
Minimal risk
Risk on a construction project is never eliminated, only located and priced. Our job is to find it while it is still cheap to move and to tell you clearly who is carrying it.
Three decades of Southern California ground
The projects below are a fraction of the work, but they show the range of conditions we have priced and managed.
We have worked on hillside residential developments where the grading strategy determined whether the deal penciled, on urban infill sites where staging space was the binding constraint, and on remote industrial facilities where the nearest batch plant was an hour away. We have managed roadway widenings adjacent to live traffic, bridge construction over sensitive habitat, water infrastructure for public districts, and reclamation of active mining operations.
We have also provided expert analysis and testimony on earthwork quantities, construction cost, construction management standard of care, scheduling and delay, and construction defect matters, work that requires the underlying opinion to survive hostile examination.
Beyond California, the firm has performed assignments in Mexico and the United Arab Emirates, and has supported clients on projects in Hawaii.
Selected work
High speed automotive test facility on a remote desert site with demanding grading tolerances.
California City, CaliforniaMining and ReclamationIrwindale Mine Reclamation Phase 3Large volume reclamation and engineered fill program within an active aggregate operation.
Irwindale, CaliforniaPublic FacilitiesSanta Fe DepotWork at a historic downtown transit landmark surrounded by active rail and pedestrian operations.
San Diego, CaliforniaWork with a firm that has priced the ground you are standing on
Tell us about the site and the schedule. We will tell you what we see and whether we can help.
Send us the project
Tell us the site, the scope, and the deadline. Initial consultations carry no fee and no obligation.