Cator Ruma & Associates is an MEP engineering firm founded in 1959 and based on Tabor Street in Lakewood, Colorado, on Denver’s west side. It also keeps offices in Wyoming, Boise and Salt Lake City, and says it has more than 110 engineers and specialists on staff. The firm designs mechanical, electrical, plumbing and technology systems and provides commissioning. Healthcare is a core market, joined by higher education, K-12, laboratories, hospitality, civic and mission-critical work, mostly across the Mountain West. Cator Ruma is an engineering consultant on Craig Hospital’s East Building expansion in Englewood, a roughly $250 million job for the neurorehabilitation hospital that adds about 86,000 square feet and topped out Sept. 24, 2026.
“Measured. Considered. Engineered.” The tagline suits a practice that has been doing mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering in Colorado since 1959 and is still run by engineers — Michael Meints, PE as principal and chief executive, Blake Winter, PE as principal and president, Geri Rosier as chief financial officer, and eleven further named principals across mechanical, electrical and commissioning.
The headcount sits at more than 110 engineers and specialists, working from four offices under the banner Engineering Across The West: Lakewood in Colorado, Cheyenne in Wyoming, Boise in Idaho and Salt Lake City in Utah. Seven market sectors are served — healthcare, higher education, hospitality, laboratories, K-12, civic and mission critical.
The mechanical specialties list is where a practice of this age shows its depth: central utility plants, large chiller plants, six-pipe chillers with heat-recovery loops, balanced geothermal well field design, dedicated outdoor air systems, lab exhaust with energy recovery for hazardous exhaust, steam boilers and humidity control. None of that is routine office HVAC.
Commissioning is treated as a discipline with its own eight-part scope rather than a punch-list exercise: design phase reviews, submittal and shop drawing reviews, MEP and controls integration, pre-functional verification, functional performance testing, issue management, test and balance oversight, and training and documentation. The team works on the cloud-based BlueRithm platform, measuring against the project’s Owner’s Project Requirements and Basis of Design.
Technology design is the fourth leg — structured cabling, audio visual, access control, video surveillance, nurse call and patient care systems, physical security assessments, and IT procurement and management.
Higher education work makes up much of the recent portfolio: the CU Boulder Chemistry and Applied Math building at 130,000 square feet, Colorado School of Mines’ Spruce Residence Hall at 120,000 square feet plus roof, auditorium and controls work at the Green Center, and Colorado Mountain College’s Spring Valley Ascent Center at 91,300 square feet. At Colorado State University, the new Chemistry Building at 61,200 square feet achieved LEED Platinum, with the SPUR Campus Hydro Building and the Suzanne and Walter Scott Jr. Bioengineering Building both at 120,000 square feet.
Smaller civic jobs sit alongside them — Boise Fire Station #13 at 12,000 square feet and Fire Station #9 at 7,800 — along with Children’s Hospital Colorado, Denver Union Station, the NREL Research Support Facility, MSU Aerospace & Engineering Sciences and Trailside Elementary. The featured current project is a renovation of Monterey Community School for Mapleton Public Schools.
Three stated values sit behind all of it: quality that lasts, integrity in every detail, innovation with purpose. The firm also maintains a Giving Back page.
One small note for anyone dialing from the website: the tel: links on the contact and company pages are mismatched — the Wyoming link points to the Colorado number and the Utah link to Boise. Use the displayed numbers.
