His firm sees some explosive growth.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: People - Manuel Zapata - Duke Power Co.

Manuel Zapata's back was against the wall after he was laid off in November 1988 as a manager of cost engineering at Duke Power Co. He had a wife and two young children at home in Charlotte. His stab at importing agricultural products from his native Chile wilted. So in 1990, he returned to the profession in which he was trained, founding Zapata Engineering PA.

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The company expects revenue between $28 million and $35 million this year, up from less than $50,000 in 1991. The total depends on what it gets from the Army Corps of Engineers for disposing of captured munitions in Iraq. "Every round of ammunition that gets destroyed is a round that won't fall into terrorists' hands," Zapata, 63, says. The company sent four employees to Iraq in June to join five already there. The initial phase of Zapata's contract is worth at least $3.8 million.

The company's certification as a "small disadvantaged business" gives it an edge when competing for some federal contracts. "When an opportunity for work comes along, we compete very hard," he says. "The government gets their money's worth out of us."

Born in Santiago, he became interested in engineering while working at a tire plant there. "All of a sudden, all of the physics and math I took in high school made sense to me," he says. He studied engineering at the University of Chile but left in early 1967 because of political unrest. He moved in with a Chilean friend in Gastonia and earned a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from UNC Charlotte in 1969. He...