Our History

John A. Martin & Associates, Inc. (JAMA) was founded in 1953 by John A. “Jack” Martin, Sr. and is presently one of the largest privately-owned structural engineering firms in the nation. JAMA is located in downtown Los Angeles, California, and draws upon the Martin Associates Group’s corporate network of 12 offices throughout the United States and China. The firm completes structural designs for an annual average of 60 million square feet of new construction worldwide, reflecting its well-deserved reputation for providing the highest quality structural engineering services. The firm’s staff of more than 400 maintains professional structural engineering registrations in all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico, Guam and China. JAMA implements the latest project management techniques, including state-of-the-art engineering concepts and computer technology, to maximize overall efficiency.

JAMA has demonstrated capabilities in structural design for all project types and sizes, completed in both the private and public sectors worldwide. Utilizing the latest design techniques, computer applications, and engineering concepts, JAMA creates structural systems based on their efficiency and economic feasibility, as well as consistency with each project’s architectural theme. The firm has designed numerous structures in zones of high seismicity and routinely performs nonlinear, linear, static, and dynamic seismic analyses of complex structures. JAMA’s Research & Development department has been awarded grants by such diverse agencies as EERI, FEMA, the County of Los Angeles, the California Strong Motion Instrumentation Program, and USGS for studying various damage characteristics of earthquakes and their impact on seismic design practice. The standard textbook for teaching seismic design in more than a dozen top universities, The Seismic Design Handbook, was written by a Farzad Naeim of JAMA. This research, combined with the numerous seismic structural upgrades performed by the Martin organization, has led to the development of efficient and cost effective schemes for the seismic upgrade of many existing structures. Buildings are designed for wind forces in much the same manner as earthquake forces, considering member stresses and inter-story drifts. Having designed and renewed structural systems for many well known buildings to efficiently resist wind loads in high-wind regions such as Chicago, Florida, Hawaii, Abu Dhabi, Puerto Rico, New York, Texas, Nevada, and Guam, the JAMA staff can address the most sophisticated specific wind analyses and design requirements, including consideration of wind as a dynamic load and development of finite element dynamic analyses.