Lee Engineering’s Jonathon Kruse, PE, PTOE, recently traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina, to attend the Smart Cities Connect Conference & Expo, where he proudly supported the City of Albuquerque as they received 1 of just 20 Smart City Awards.

The award recognizes the City of Albuquerque’s leadership in implementing innovative safety initiatives designed to protect pedestrians and improve roadway operations, specifically the Pedestrian Actuated Warning System (PAWS) and Enhanced Rest-in-Red operations, both focused on improving safety for vulnerable road users and creating smarter, more responsive intersections.

Lee Engineering is honored to have played a small role in supporting these significant advancements and to collaborate with partners committed to making our communities safer and more connected.

Congratulations to the City of Albuquerque and everyone involved in bringing these impactful safety solutions to life!

We’re excited to welcome Nancy Lopez to the Lee Engineering team as a senior engineering designer in our El Paso office.

Nancy brings experience in Traffic Impact Analyses (TIAs), traffic modeling and simulation, guide signing, pavement markings, traffic signals, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and other transportation infrastructure projects throughout the Southwest.

She earned her B.S. in Civil Engineering and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso, and is passionate about designing safer, smarter, and more efficient transportation systems.

In addition to her technical expertise, Nancy is a strong advocate for education and mentorship in the engineering profession and currently serves as secretary-treasurer for the ITE Lone Star Section.

Please join us in welcoming Nancy to the team. We’re thrilled to have her on board!

Help us congratulate Justin Willis, PE, PTOE, on being promoted to Project Manager in our Oklahoma City office!  During his seven years at Lee Engineering, Justin has managed and collaborated on several projects focusing on traffic operations studies, traffic signal designs, lighting design, and highway signing and striping. He is an active member of ITE, ASCE, and the Oklahoma Traffic Engineering Association. We look forward to watching you excel in this new role, Justin!

Way to go, Curtis, on earning your Professional Traffic Operations Engineer (PTOE) and Road Safety Professional 1 (RSP1) certifications! Curtis is a Project Engineer with our Dallas office and has been with Lee Engineering for over six years. Since graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, he has focused his career in traffic engineering and continues to grow professionally by reaching milestones just like this! Keep up the great work, Curtis!

Let’s hear it for Ryan Henderson on earning his PTOE certification! Ryan is a Project Engineer with our Oklahoma City office and has been with Lee Engineering for over 2 years. We are excited to continue watching you grow!

Help us congratulate Hetal Bhatt, our newest Dallas Project Manager!  Hetal has been with Lee Engineering for over six years and has over 15 years of traffic engineering and transportation planning experience in the public and private sectors.

Help us congratulate Jonathon Kruse, PE, PTOE, on his LinkedIn profile for recently being promoted to Project Manager! Jon started with Lee Engineering in 2012 and during that time has been involved with several groundbreaking and innovative projects throughout New Mexico. His traffic engineering specialties lie in Intelligent Transportation Systems, Traffic Engineering Studies, and Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPMs).

Most notably, Mr. Kruse leads several Active Traffic & Signal Monitoring/Timing efforts using ATSPMs for high-volume traffic signals impacted by critical construction projects. Additionally, he leads the New Mexico office’s traffic data collection program where he and his team collect more than 1,300 traffic counts each year. Keep up the great work, Jon!

We look forward to your continued success.

It is with a mix of sadness and excitement that we announce Jim Lee’s retirement from Lee Engineering. After spending more than 20 years with several public and private agencies, Jim started Lee Engineering with a plan to provide the level of knowledge and experience needed for our increasingly complex traffic situations not typically found in a full-service firm. Over the last 32 years, this plan grew into an organization spanning four states and seven different offices, that is home to many leaders in the traffic engineering and transportation planning community.

Jim has always believed in “doing the right thing, the right way, the first time” and instilled his vision and values into each of his employees, projects, and offices. We are proud of the legacy that Jim created and want to assure our clients and colleagues that Jim’s legacy will continue in every project and endeavor we pursue. We offer a big Thank You to Jim for all he has done for the firm, our clients, and the profession, and we wish him the best of luck as he embarks on his newest adventure, retirement.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Jody Short at or Dave Bruggeman .

Lee Engineering prides itself on finding uniquely qualified talent, and James Robertson is a perfect example. James recently earned his RSP2IB certification, an achievement that only 4 engineers in the country have attained.

This certification is geared towards professionals whose primary job functions are directed at improving the safety performance of surface transportation systems. It is for professionals responsible for developing and implementing engineering or behavioral programs aimed at reducing the number of fatalities and injuries due to road crashes. Great job, James!

Help us give Jonathon Kruse a HUGE round of applause for recently earning his PTOE certification! Jon is part of our Albuquerque team and among the 80 engineers who recently passed their PTOE exam.

This achievement is a powerful demonstration of requisite knowledge, skill, and ability in the specialized application of traffic operations engineering. Congrats, Jon, and to everyone reaching this professional milestone!