CDI’s Growth in the Water Industry
A CDI automation control panel used in the motorized lift gate for flood control at the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
C
ontrol Design, Inc., (CDI) is a technology company that manufactures measuring, monitoring, and control equipment to manage natural resources like water, oil, and gas. One of its most important markets is the water and irrigation industry. CDI's custom-built equipment can measure and report critical data and activity in remote and challenging terrain, making it perfect for irrigation and water districts with infrastructure spread out over large mountain and desert regions. In this interview, Jim Conley, CDI’s founder; Rod Stone, its president; and Felix Diaz, a research and development engineer at the company, tell Irrigation Leader about CDI’s services and its exciting prospects for growth. Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.
30 | IRRIGATION LEADER | February 2021
Rod Stone: The coowner of CDI, along with Jim, is a man named Keith Marshall, who owns several companies on whose boards I serve. Keith and I went to college together, and I have been actively helping him run his companies for the past 4½ years. When Keith and Jim formed a partnership to found CDI, Keith asked me to oversee and run the company. I’m not active in the day-to-day operations of the business, but I oversee its activities and provide support and resources as necessary. Felix Diaz: I’m from the East Coast and only moved to New Mexico recently. I have degrees in computer engineering and philosophy. That combination, along with working with medical diagnostics and Fortune 500 companies for a couple of years, showed me that the industry-leading technologies that Fortune 500 companies use are accessible to anybody who is bold enough to go after them. I came to realize that water, one of our oldest industries, needs this technology the most. I started wondering how I could get into this industry and how water could be better managed and organized. It just so happens that I met an individual who decided to bring me all the way to the West to help figure out how to show districts that this technology is attainable. irrigationleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF CDI.
Jim Conley: I have been involved with radio communications since I was around 20 years old. I studied radio communications at a small college in eastern Kentucky. After that, I worked in radio communications for General Electric and Motorola. I spent about 20 years in data systems, microwave, and general radio-type communications. That’s where I saw the opportunity and developed the idea for this product.
A motorized lift gate kit with automation for flood control at the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
