Conrad Huss

(1941-2016)

 Co-Founder, M3 Engineering & Technology

2015 Inductee into American Mining Hall of Fame

Conrad Huss was born in Chicago in 1941. His father was a carpenter from Germany and his mother a farm girl from Southern Illinois. Although poor, they were industrious and stressed the importance of education to their children.

Huss attended the University of Illinois and earned a Bachelor’s degree in English, another in mathematics and almost a third in engineering. After undergraduate school Huss became an oceanographer doing mainly bathymetry for 30 months.  As an Ensign and later a Lieutenant Junior Grade in the Navy, he sailed the Pacific with Hawaii and Alaska as ports of call, and later the Atlantic in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Then for half a year he taught high school science and math in West Tampa, Florida.

Graduate school took Huss to the University of Arizona where he earned a Master’s and then a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics, later accepting a professorship to Northern Arizona University. Deciding to put his education to practical use, Huss next worked design engineering jobs for 15 years at Raytheon, RGA and Mountain States Engineers.

In 1986, Huss helped found M3 Engineering & Technology Corporation and has been its Chairman of the Board for its entire 30 year history, and its more than 10,000 projects.  M3 now has around a thousand employees with offices in Arizona, North Carolina, Argentina and Mexico.  Some M3 projects now exceed a billion dollars in value and have taken Huss on business to over twenty countries across the world.

M3’s guiding principle has always been “excellent and innovative engineering.”  In the early years assistance was provided to the mines in the Southwest to modernize, to expand, and to become the most cost effective in the world.   Over time M3 emerged to a full discipline firm offering complete project execution through engineering, procurement and construction management (E.P.C.M.) procedure.  Hecla’s La Choya, a gold operation in Sonora, Mexico was M3’s first project and was also the first Mexican mining project built under new government regulations with foreign ownership.  To date, more than half of the Mexican mining projects completed in the last 25 years have been managed by M3 with the Goldcorp’s Peñasquito project among its proudest achievements.

Huss’ innovative planning and management has helped various operations cope with governmental requirements.  Many of these guidelines have now been adopted by other mines.  His vision has also catapulted M3 to become a major engineer of large observatories around the world.

Huss has five children, four sons and a daughter.

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Conrad passed away in Tucson on 16 September 2016.

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