In 1996, Randy L. Martin was living in Ankeny, IA and working for the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities (IAMU). He was director of Energy Services for IAMU. The Energy Services Division was fee for service. That meant they didn't get any membership dues and had to sell their services to the association membership to support themselves. The Division was made up of Mr. Martin and Tim Power. They developed a web site for their section of the office and decided that building web sites was pretty easy. They decided to start putting web sites together for the association membership.
During this time, Randy kept running into his old boss, Larry Bean, director of the Energy and Geological Resources Division of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and Chairman of the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO). After several months of telling Larry Bean that NASEO needed a web site, they approached Mr. Martin and asked for an estimate of what it would take to put together a web site for NASEO. NASEO turned into R. L. Martin & Associate's first client.
After being back in Iowa for only one year after three years in Colorado, the whole Martin family wanted to move back to Colorado. Mr. Martin weighed the options and decided to make the plunge, put their house on the market and when it sold, he turned in his resignation. He asked if he could subcontract some of the projects he was working on and IAMU approved the arrangement. He also talked to the Energy Efficient Building Association (EEBA) and agreed to become a quarter-time western office for the association. So with one web site, NASEO, a couple subcontracts from IAMU and a quarter-time position as EEBA Western Office, R. L. Martin & Associates was born on August 9, 1996.
One web site led to another web site (RESNET) and led to more web sites (ECEE, NWCC, OEMC) and in a short period of time, Mr. Martin had enough web sites to keep him busy. Mr. Martin's son, Jonathan, being a computer whiz, soon joined in to help out on the work load.
R. L. Martin and Associates was incorporated in January 2004 as R. L. Martin & Associates, Inc. with Randy L. Martin as President. At the same time, Kim Martin was added to the payroll in charge of billing. In May of 2004, after graduating Summa Cum Laude from Colorado State University with a double major in Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Jonathan Martin joined R. L. Martin & Associates, Inc. as Vice President of Software Development.
Today R. L. Martin and Associates manages over 50 web sites for a variety of clients and hosts over 150 web sites.