CENTEC comes to North Carolina
with new office in Denver
By Carolyne Gruske
North Carolina Construction News
special feature
Western North Carolina’s boom-
ing development environment
means demand has increased for
engineering services, so CENTEC
Engineering, PLLC has opened an
office in the area, in Denver.

As a civil engineering firm, CEN-
TEC specializes in civil site develop-
ment engineering, and also offers a
wide variety of other services in-
cluding solid waste engineering,
storm water permitting, and con-
struction monitoring for residential,
industrial and commercial sites.

With more than 30 years in the
industry, the company has vast ex-
perience designing roads, parking
lots, drainage structures and utili-
ties (including water and sewer,
gas, and electrical).

8 — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 — The North Carolina Construction News



CENTEC’s site development
work includes developing construc-
tion plans and specifications for ei-
ther negotiated (design-build) work
or work that will be bid out to con-
tractors. It’s a service that CENTEC
can offer while keeping costs down
and still providing timely, accurate
service because it embraces tech-
nology and modern, efficient ways
of conducting business, explains
CENTEC owner Joe Sulesky.

“I have a new school business
model. The old school business
model was where you had to have
receptionists and secretaries and in-
house accountants and all these
types of people in these overhead
positions. And that was true 30 or
40 years ago, but now with technol-
ogy and how quickly things can get
done, you don’t need all the over-
head. So we’re very streamlined.”
Being streamlined means CEN-
TEC is able to keep its costs down
and its budgets tight, all to the ben-
efit of its customers.

Even though it’s a small and nim-
ble company, CENTEC has worked
on projects of all scopes and sizes.

Some of the larger ones involved
overall budgets of $20 million and
250-acre sites. Some of the smaller
ones involved as little as half-acre
office sites.

Based in Beckley, West Virginia,
CENTEC has worked on sites in
Maryland and throughout Virginia,
the Carolinas, and Tennessee.

“We’re experienced dealing with
a wide variety of government agen-
cies—local, state and federal—the
agencies that regulate this type of
work,” says Sulesky.

He adds that it makes sense for
CENTEC to be part of the region’s
construction community.

“The area around Denver is a
hotbed of development. There is so
much growth,” says Sulesky ex-
plaining that Lake Norman and Duke
Power Company are two of the rea-
ENGINEERING, PLLC
centec-engineering.com sons why the area is so attractive to
developers. “There’s an enormous amount of
development around Lake Norman,
and Denver is this fairly small, still
fairly rural town on the western side
of Lake Norman. Development
started on the eastern side of the
lake and it’s moving along the north
side and the south side and it’s
going to come along to the west
side where Denver is, so Denver is
centrally located within all this de-
velopment.” As the owner, Sulesky is putting
his name out to potential partners
and clients as a testament to CEN-
TEC’s commitment to customer
service and quality.

“I’m the face of the company. I
own the company. I’m involved in all
the decisions, so there’s no hierar-
chy of people that a potential client
is dealing with that doesn’t have
ownership in the company.”
The CENTEC staff has over 30 years of
experience, with Professional Engineering
registrations throughout the Mid-Atlantic
states. Our commercial, industrial and
residential development projects range
from one acre to 100+ acres from the
shores of the Chesapeake Bay, through
the coalfields of Appalachia to the
Piedmont of the Carolinas.

The North Carolina Construction News — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 — 9