Member Awardee

Edward Cruz was born in Portugal and immigrated to this country with his family in 1950, when he was 9 years old. Settling in the Ironbound section of Newark, New Jersey, his father started a small construction company, initially doing foundation work in Levittown, Long Island and then moving on to utility construction work in northern New Jersey.

Ed earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1963, and worked for a number of years for his father’s company, Cruz Construction Company. Under his leadership, the company completed numerous projects, including a major section of Boston’s Northeast Rail Corridor and the Round Valley, New Jersey, Water Pipeline.

In 1984, Ed and his cousin, Evaristo G. Cruz, founded E. E. Cruz & Company, Inc., Holmdel, New Jersey. The company is active in heavy construction work in the New York Metropolitan area, including bridges and roads for the New Jersey Turnpike and the monorail tunnels at JFK Airport. The company has also pioneered the use of microtunneling to install deep sewer tunnels in New York and New Jersey and has recently completed for New Jersey Transit a tunnel extension of Newark New Jersey’s subway system.

E.E. Cruz & Co., Inc. is currently constructing a $250 Mil. storm water retention and treatment facility at Flushing Bay, New York; the $135 Mil. Expansion to the Rahway Valley, New Jersey Treatment Plant and $75 Mil. in improvements to New Jersey Transit’s Meadow Maintenance Facility in Kearny, New Jersey.

Ed served as President of The Moles in 2003 and has served as President of the New Jersey and National Utility Contractors Associations and the General Contractor’s Association of New York City. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Associated General Contractors of New Jersey.

Ed was the recipient of the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Edward F. Weston Medal, awarded by the Board of Trustees for outstanding personal and professional achievement by an alumnus, and was cited as Construction Man of The Year by his New Jersey construction industry colleagues. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer.

Ed and his wife, Sharon, reside in New York City and are the parents of four children: Robin, Jeffrey, Kelly and Susan and are the proud grandparents of ten grandchildren. In his leisure time, Ed enjoys reading, traveling and golf.