About JMI Developers

Carlos Iglesias, Founder & Principal

Carlos Iglesias is a second-generation construction professional with more than 30 years of experience in the building industry and over 15 years specializing in regulatory strategy and development approvals throughout the Washington, DC metropolitan region. He grew up working alongside his father's construction company — gaining hands-on field experience from a young age that gave him a ground-level understanding of what it actually takes to construct a building, from coordinating trades in the field to delivering a completed project.

Seeking to deepen his technical foundation, Carlos apprenticed under Luther Bruner Jr., a Washington, DC Licensed Architect, where he learned how construction documents are developed and assembled across civil engineering, architectural design, structural engineering, and MEP systems. That experience gave Carlos a rare, multi-disciplinary perspective on how design documentation is prepared and how the various disciplines integrate to form a complete set of construction drawings.

Carlos later expanded his focus into the regulatory side of development — learning how construction documents move through government review and approval processes. He joined Bello & Associates, a firm specializing in third-party plan review coordination, inspections, permit processing, and zoning entitlement services. Starting as a permit expediter, Carlos distinguished himself through an exceptional command of complex regulatory processes and agency review systems. Driven by a deep curiosity about how regulatory systems function, he learned every aspect of the firm's operations and eventually rose to Director of Operations — overseeing regulatory processing, plan review coordination, and inspection divisions.

Through decades of direct engagement with Washington DC's regulatory agencies, Carlos has built a reputation for technical accuracy, preparedness, and professional integrity. His work is respected by agency reviewers for its clarity and thorough understanding of applicable building codes and regulatory procedures — allowing for efficient and productive engagement when navigating the most complex approval processes. No other firm in this market combines that level of construction experience, design documentation knowledge, and regulatory strategy under one roof.

Carlos founded JMI Developers to bring together the full spectrum of knowledge gained throughout his career — and today personally reviews every new project entering the firm, analyzing the regulatory landscape and reverse-engineering the approval path required to align with each client's development and construction schedule. JMI's approach is straightforward: every project has a regulatory path. Our job is to find it, map it, and execute it — faster and more efficiently than anyone else in the market. When other firms reach the edge of their regulatory knowledge — their clients call JMI.