TMC Engineering did not begin in a boardroom. It began around a kitchen table, in the middle of one of the hardest seasons a family can face.
When Jorge Monraz lost both of his parents during COVID, the trauma could have pulled his family in a dozen directions. Instead, his daughter Dazani - fresh out of high school and watching her father grieve - proposed something audacious: what if they kept the family together by building a business together? Jorge stepped away from his role at another company in 2021, and The Monraz Company - TMC Engineering - was born out of a single, stubborn idea: keep the family unified, put a roof over the next generation's future, and do it all on a foundation of "Family First."
Five years later, that idea has become a thriving San Marcos-based general engineering contractor working across hundreds of cities and dozens of counties - growing 20 to 30% year over year, with a leadership team made up almost entirely of Monrazes. It's a construction company on paper. In practice, it's a family philosophy that happens to pave parking lots.
A different operating emphasis
Jorge has been in this industry for going on 38 years, and he's seen how most construction companies are built: pick a lane, stick to what you know, and don't deviate. "You do paving, you don't do landscape, you don't do this - you stick to the paving," he says. It works, but it also calcifies. Once a company has its structure and its standards, changing them is nearly impossible.
Starting fresh gave the Monrazes a rare chance to build differently. "We said, let's take everything that everyone complains about and bring it under one house - and just be the solution to the problem," Jorge explains. That's the emphasis that sets TMC apart, and it's why Jorge bristles a little at the word "construction company."
"I hate to categorize us as a construction company, because we're more of a solution company," he says. Customers don't come to TMC excited about asphalt; they come with expensive, unglamorous problems - parking lots, infrastructure, the kind of necessary work that costs stakeholders real money and delivers no obvious flash. TMC's answer is turnkey: identify the problem, lay out several solutions across several budgets, and then execute - all under one roof. Asphalt paving, concrete construction, seal coat and striping, demolition - the range of trades in-house is precisely what lets them say, "What's the problem? We'll take care of it." That niche has carried them from a Costco and a Benihana to airport runways, a speedway, and military facilities - and through more than 30 years (across Jorge's career) of keeping the drive-thrus at chains like Del Taco and Jack in the Box open while crews work around them.
The org chart is a family tree - on purpose
Walk through TMC's leadership and you'll meet the Monraz family one role at a time. Jorge's wife, Julie - his partner since ninth grade and his spouse of 30 years - founded the company and recently handed the CEO title to Jorge while stepping into the CFO seat. Dazani, 25, who dreamed up the whole thing, runs the office: she signs the checks, watches the bank accounts, and keeps the operation organized. Jorge Jr., 23, has been "Bob the Builder" since he was a kid - so he runs the field, executing jobs and getting them done. Ryan, 21, with his get-it-done demeanor and sharp eye, coordinates production and reviews the contracts. The youngest, Eric, is 14.
Building a company with your family sounds romantic until you've watched it go wrong - and Jorge has, many times, in other people's businesses. "The failures were when they're competing with each other," he says. His fix is a principle he repeats like a mantra: Never ask a fish to climb a wall. Don't force a person into a role they'll resent; find the thing they'll excel at, and let them shine. "Who knows their kids better than their parents?" he asks. Every Monraz has a lane that fits their personality, and nobody steps on anyone's toes - everyone contributes to the same solution.
That clarity of roles is downstream of an unusually intentional upbringing. Julie homeschooled the kids, weaving learning into daily life rather than confining it to a rigid block of hours - a curious question here, a book there, a "hey, let's research that" in the middle of an ordinary afternoon. The result is a family that treats work the same way it treated school: not as a nine-to-five or a Monday-through-Friday, but as a lifestyle. "It's dreadful when you have to go to work," Jorge says, "but it's fun when you get to live in it." And TMC was never meant to be a life sentence for the kids - it was meant to be a launchpad. Learn to run a business, earn your sweat equity, and go do whatever you want with it. Dazani already is: a self-described multi-entrepreneur, she's opening a beauty salon alongside her work at TMC.
Why "empower women in construction" is in the mission statement
Look at TMC's mission and you'll find something you rarely see in this industry: a commitment to empowering women in construction, sitting right alongside the paving and the concrete. For Jorge, it's not a slogan - it's autobiography.
"We discredit that a lot. At least I did, in my years," he admits. "We've always had that mindset - it's construction, it's a man's world, you've got to be a roughneck. And it's really not." The women in Jorge's life kept proving otherwise. His mother never steered him wrong. Julie never steered him wrong. When he faced the hardest calls of his career - should I take this job, should I make this move - those were the conversations he had with her. "She always gave me the most non-biased opinion of what I should do," he says. "I've always embraced that."
So when the family built TMC, Jorge wanted Julie at the forefront, visible to their kids as the hub of counsel and clarity she's always been. The company's transparency - with employees, with clients, with each other at the dinner table - is really just the family's own operating system, brought into the business. It works for the Monrazes, Jorge says, because they figured out what works for them rather than copying anyone else.
The hardest job in paving isn't the paving
Ask Jorge what the toughest job to get right is, and his answer has nothing to do with asphalt. "The hardest job is the one where the customer doesn't know their own expectations," he says. Communication, not concrete, is where projects fall apart.
His entire approach is built around a question most contractors never think to ask: why? "Are you doing this for aesthetics, or is it structural? Do you have budget you need to spend? Is your boss tired of looking at it? Are you trying to sell? Is there an insurance issue? Do you have a new client coming and you want the roads to look good?" There are a million reasons to spend money on a parking lot, and the right solution depends entirely on which one is driving the decision. Jorge has walked countless job sites where every contractor bids the identical scope and nobody bothers to ask the client what they're actually trying to achieve. TMC asks.
That same instinct is how the company earns trust in an industry people approach with their guard up - one where everybody's heard a horror story. Jorge has lost bids and later discovered the winning contractor delivered something entirely different from what the customer thought they were buying, and the customer never knew the difference. His antidote is radical clarity: detailed site plans, marked-up photos, highlighted areas, and a walk-through that ends with a direct question - do you understand exactly what you're getting? "Most managers don't really care about asphalt," he says. "They have something they have to fix. It's our job to let them know what they're getting and what they're asking for." That's the difference between a job that looks fine on day one and one that still holds up in year five: not a secret in the mix, but honesty in the conversation.
Rooted in North County - and staying that way
TMC's home in San Marcos was Dazani's call, and it was a strategic one. "Dad, you're always on the road," she told him. San Marcos sits almost dead center - the same distance to LA, to the Inland Empire, and to South County. On any given day Jorge might drive an hour to Brea, an hour to San Bernardino, or an hour to Chula Vista; the central location lets TMC serve clients across the region without being tethered to any one corner of it.
But North County is more than a logistics decision. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jorge chose to raise his own family here, and all four kids went through Del Norte High School, with Eric headed there next. "It's such a beautiful town. It's a place we want to call home," he says. "We wanted to be a staple in San Diego." That conviction shows up in how the family gives back: they've adopted a highway off the 163 and Kearny Villa Road, they support the Simon Youth Foundation, they're involved with organizations that help local businesses, and Jorge served as president of the Honorary Deputy Sheriff Association for San Diego County. His rule for his kids is blunt and non-negotiable: "If you're going to live here, you have to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And not being involved is being part of the problem."
That ethos extends to how TMC spends its money, too. In an era when so many companies are being bought out by distant, non-local owners, Jorge is emphatic that TMC keeps its dollars home. "The money stays in San Diego, it's invested in San Diego, and we reinvest in San Diego," he says. They buy local, they employ local, and they encourage small businesses to support other small businesses - because that, in his view, is what actually takes care of the local economy and the neighbors who make it up.
Growth as a form of generosity
Ask about the next three to five years and Jorge doesn't hesitate: growth, in every direction. But listen to why he wants to grow, and it reframes the whole company. "There's no better feeling than helping another family," he says. "If we could double in size, that's that many more families we could impact." TMC treats its people accordingly - the generous benefits and near-profit-sharing culture come out of the company's own bottom line, not the customer's invoice. "We reinvest in the employees, we reinvest in the community," Jorge says. "We have to grow."
And then, once more, the line that runs through everything the Monrazes do - the family philosophy, the hiring, the community work, the ambition itself: "If we stopped, we'd be part of the problem." For a company born out of loss and built to keep a family together, growth isn't just a business goal. It's how they take care of their own - and everyone else's - one job, one family, one San Diego neighborhood at a time.
TMC Engineering (The Monraz Company) is a family-owned general engineering contractor based in San Marcos, specializing in asphalt paving, concrete construction, seal coat, striping, and demolition for commercial and residential clients across San Diego, Riverside, and Imperial County. Learn more at themonrazcompany.com.
Built in San Diego is a free feature series by Revvia that tells the stories of the real people behind San Diego's local businesses - the founders, the operators, and the builders who make this community worth living in. Every feature includes a professionally written article, a live backlink, and an owner's story told the way it deserves to be told.
