Raja RaheelKhanzada

Raja Raheel Khanzada is a Dallas-based engineering entrepreneur and the founder of 1020 Ventures. He built the firm around a problem he kept watching landowners and developers run into: a site needs a surveyor, a civil engineer, a structural engineer, an MEP engineer, an architect and someone to fight the permit through the city — and hiring each of them separately leaves the owner refereeing five firms and absorbing every delay in between.

His answer was to put all of those disciplines under one roof and one project number. Under Raja's direction, 1020 Ventures takes ground-up residential, commercial, multifamily and mixed-use projects from feasibility and entitlements through platting, site design, flood and drainage studies, building design, plan review and permit issuance — with the owner dealing with one team the whole way.

Raja works closely with clients in the Dallas–Fort Worth growth ring and across Texas, including smaller jurisdictions where plan review is slower and less predictable. His focus is on the parts of a project that decide whether it moves: getting the scope right up front, getting the drawings sealed and submitted correctly the first time, and staying on the city until the permit is issued.

Raja studied at The University of Texas at Arlington and has built his career in Dallas–Fort Worth, where he also founded Rolling Ice, a hand-rolled ice cream shop in Arlington. Two unrelated businesses, one operating principle: the customer should never have to manage the people they hired.

Alongside the engineering practice, Raja leads the development of 1020's construction-technology platform — Build One, Permit OS and Engineer OS — software built from the firm's own permitting workflow to help owners, engineers and reviewers move projects faster.