"They've all been very responsive and, to be honest with you, when they get a project I know it's going to get done quickly, and I know they're going to coordinate with those who are going to be impacted," Mack said. "They work very quickly and efficiently. They are very responsive to our needs and requests."

Among the projects that JNJ Engineering has won in recent years:

• $4 million to build a flood-control improvement project for Las Vegas. Construction began in February and is expected to last 11 months.

• $2.4 million to revitalize or build 6,500 feet of walking trails, 1,500 feet of paved roadway and 16 picnic areas in a nature preserve for the Las Vegas Valley Water District in 2005.

• $1.6 million to replace and upgrade the service lines between water meter and water mains. The Las Vegas Valley Water District awarded the contract in June 2005.

• $880,500 to improve street drainage for the Pima County Regional Flood Control District in Arizona in a contract awarded in 2005. But critics of the sect — especially women who said they fled the group rather than enter into polygamist marriages — complain companies like JNJ are winning contracts because of an unfair labor advantage.

"A law-abiding company will bid on a job and be underbid by $100,000 or more because they have to pay for their labor," said Brenda Jensen of the HOPE Organization, a support group for former polygamist-sect members. "But these (sect-controlled) companies don't have to pay taxes for employees who are often missionaries working to earn themselves a wife."

JNJ declined to comment for this story. "No, thank you," said a woman at the company's office in Hildale, Utah.