About Mesa

A Message from our President and CEO

Mesa Associates, Inc. was founded in 1988 by my late husband, Chandrashekhar “Shekhar” Savant with the vision of building an elite engineering firm that was respected and valued by both our clients and employees.

All of our achievements over the past 34 years were made possible because of the faith and trust invested in us by our clients and the hard work and dedication of our employees. Our employees are our greatest assets.

Today we have an amazingly talented Mesa family of over 1,000 employees in 17 cities and 19 offices serving wonderful clients with integrity and dedication. Our reputation for quality, schedule, responsiveness and cost has brought us new clients and repeat business from our existing clients.

I am very proud of our accomplishments as we have grown to serve more than 200 clients, delivered projects on four continents, and are currently generating revenues over $188M annually. I am proud of the fact that our achievements, growth, and success have come with integrity and honesty. I am proud that our reputation as a supplier and employer is outstanding.

Most of all, I am excited about our future. As we expand services to our existing clientele and develop new ones, we will continue to hold high our values of the past while looking forward to the challenges of the future. We will continue to strive to be the firm of choice for our clients by providing the highest quality of services at the best value.

It is my commitment to both our clients and employees that we will not forget that honesty, integrity, and dedicated service is what brought us to where we are, and the same will continue to take us forward.  I am looking forward to building upon our reputation and even greater growth in the future.

As we continue to fulfill the vision and exemplify the values created by Shekhar over 30 years ago, I can honestly say it has been and will continue to be an honor to serve our clients and the Mesa family.

History

Mesa Associates, Inc. founder, Chandrashekhar “Shekhar” Savant, received a bachelor’s degree of civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. In 1976, after working as an engineer for eight years, Shekhar left his home in Bombay, India and came to the United States. Finding work as a dishwasher in a restaurant allowed Shekhar to support himself until he could continue his education. Once the restaurant owner discovered he was a civil engineer, the owner allowed Shekhar to design an extension to the restaurant; thus began Shekhar’s engineering career in the United States. Shekhar’s wife, Ranjana, joined him in the U.S. eight months later.

After receiving a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of West Virginia, Shekhar and his family moved several times with various jobs until 1987 when they settled in Madison, Alabama, a suburb of Huntsville. Shekhar had carried a dream for several years to have a multi-disciplined engineering firm that would ultimately become international in scope and reputation. Together, he and Ranjana talked about having a company that would be distinctly unique – not only in the way the company would treat clients, but perhaps more importantly, in the way it would treat its employees. Shekhar and Ranjana made a decision in 1988 to charter Mesa Associates, Inc. While performing engineering services for industrial clients in the Huntsville-Decatur area during the early years of the company, the Savants decided to pursue work in the electric utility market – a decision that ultimately lead to the success of Mesa.

The spring of 1994 brought tragedy to the Savant family and the company with Shekhar’s sudden and unexpected passing. Ranjana, with the support of the Mesa employees, kept Shekhar’s dream alive. Today, Ms. Savant, President and CEO, manages the multi-discipline family of companies that has grown to over 1000 employees and 18 offices in the U.S. We have continued to deal fairly and equitably with both clients and employees as we increased sales and improved profitability. Mesa continues to build strong, long-term relations with our clients by conducting ourselves with honesty and integrity. A reflection of the way Mesa treats our employees is their dedication and the personal interest each one takes in making the company successful. Our employees are Associates and are considered part of an extended family, the “Mesa Family”. Caring for our employees and their families was part of the original dream and continues to live on at Mesa.

Philosophy

Mesa has never believed that our status should be the reason our clients provide us with business opportunities, despite being a minority, woman-owned business. Our philosophy is to provide the highest quality service that is on time at the best value to our clients. We work hard to understand our client’s requirements and needs to ensure that we satisfy our client and do the job right the first time. It is our goal to continue this high standard of quality performance and achievement and is made possible by the dedication, expertise, and teamwork of our employees.

Mesa continuously competes and successfully outperforms our competition on large and small projects. Our success is predicated upon the execution of our work utilizing a management strategy that focuses on the simple philosophy of planning the work and working the plan. We like to say we are large enough to perform and small enough to care.