Jacobs regional offices in the Southwest are using innovative design and delivery approaches to expand into new areas and save customers money.
In ENR’s 2026 Top 500 Design Firms National Ranking, Jacobs ranks second in the Mountain States & Southwest list, with $440 million in regional revenue by 2025.
Jacobs’ 770 employees in the region work out of nine offices spread across Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.
Population growth and climate conditions throughout the Southwest make it a particularly active region for the company’s water sector projects, and Arizona is a hub for Jacobs’ advanced manufacturing work. The company accelerated the design of Intel’s Fab 52 in Chandler, Arizona, one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing plants in the US at more than 2.9 million square feet, delivering the project in just 3.5 years. The project was named ENR’s Project of the Year 2025.
ENR Senior Editor Jennifer Seward sat down with Tom Meinhart, executive vice president of Jacobs, to learn about the company’s presence in the Southwest. The questions and answers below have been edited and condensed.
Jacobs is known for his innovation. Can you tell us about a couple of your most avant-garde projects in the region?
One project that has been completed (the operation and maintenance piece is ongoing) is the Agua Nueva Water Reclamation Facility in Pima County, Arizona, where we provide advanced wastewater treatment and reuse in the Sonoran Desert. It was originally introduced as an innovative P3 treatment process, and we had good success with a cost reduction of $77 million. What’s good about this is that we’ve partnered with an external vendor to create Intelligent O&M. At Jacobs, we have a strong operations and maintenance business and operate nearly 300 water/wastewater plants in the US, some municipal and some private. We’ve taken the knowledge we have from operating all these plants and combined it with the supplier’s smelting platform and created with the help of AI a way to optimize chemical and energy costs.
For example, in a wastewater plant like the Pima County project, you’re injecting oxygen into the raw water, but it’s simplified overnight. The operator will receive a notification on their phone saying “you can turn off the fans from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM”. The system will not do this automatically; the operator will have to acknowledge “yes” before turning off the blowers. In the first year alone, we’ve seen hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy and chemical cost savings. We’re trying to replicate that across our platform as a value add for our customers, and in some places we’ve looked at cost sharing from reducing commodity costs.
Recent projects at a glance
Sant Joan Lateral Water Treatment Plant will provide safe drinking water to approximately 250,000 people in 43 Navajo communities in New Mexico, addressing longstanding access gaps.
Agua Nueva water recovery facility was designed with Intelligent O&M, saving up to 20% in energy use at the advanced wastewater treatment and reuse facility in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert.
Goodyear water treatment facility is the largest infrastructure project ever for the fast-growing city of Goodyear, Arizona. The $128.9 million, 8-million-gallon-per-day facility and pipeline was delivered through a fast-track, integrated design, build and operation approach, delivering the project well ahead of state regulatory deadlines.
Brightline West High Speed Rail in Nevada spans 34 miles and 22 structures as part of a 218-mile high-speed rail system that will connect Las Vegas to Southern California in about 2 hours. By reducing the number of car journeys, the rail line is expected to reduce nearly 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually.
Do you have other new technologies in the works?
We have a lot of good things going on right now. Jacobs acquired a company called Streetlight Data out of the Bay Area that does data analysis for traffic. You can see the old school version in some neighborhoods where you go through rubber hoses and they have data meters. this [new] The system uses vehicle data, and that data is bought to basically analyze traffic counts in minutes and hours instead of days and months. We have used it successfully in construction zones and determined how to redirect traffic. And you can also use it to plan future roads and highways. We have several DOTs in the US that purchase this software from us.
What market trends do you see?
“One of the capabilities we have in the water space is that we can take a project from conceptual planning to operation and maintenance.”
—Tom Meinhart, executive vice president of Jacobs
Population growth, aging infrastructure and some weather conditions are driving the water and power side of our business in the Southwest. Given the scarcity of water, we are seeing a lot of work with water reuse. We have a group of designers nationally that focus on this and we are well positioned for where the market is headed.
Also, the Fab 52 project is an example [that represents] the trend of reshoring and resiliency, where manufacturers are building more capacity for electronics to be made here in the U.S. We are one of the leading designers in the semiconductor space and we follow Intel around the world.
In addition to the Pima County project, another project we’re very proud of is the San Juan Lateral Water Treatment Plant in New Mexico for the Bureau of Land Management, and we’re going to design and build that. Obviously, we’re proud to be the #1 design company [ENR’s listing]and one of the capabilities we have in the water space is that we can take a project from conceptual planning to operation and maintenance. We recently made a full acquisition of PA Consulting out of London. They have an operation in the United States, and we are introducing them to more and more customers. Unlike other companies, we have this consultancy as part of the Jacobs umbrella.
We have the best designers on the market, and then we can put it into construction. So this $260 million contract for the Bureau of Claims has Jacobs’ name on it. We will not self-build; we will hire local subcontractors, but we will be the contractor. And then we have the opportunity if the customer decides to operate it for a multi-year contract. I think we can really take it end-to-end in the water space.
