Marcelo always knew that a career in civil engineering was his destiny. When he was visiting his uncle at a local engineering firm in Buenos Aires, he was enamored with the dynamics of the engineering office and the construction environment. He became driven by the thought of designing something and bringing it to life. So, he forged a pathway through his education, always with a civil engineering career in mind, and as a young person on school breaks, interned for a general contractor and then for the San Jose Water Company.

His first job out of college was for a small, 15-person firm, where he says he “learned by doing”. He was exposed to almost every aspect of running the company, and he especially came to value the specific training in creating lasting relationships with his team and his clients. This skill served him well, once joining BKF’s San Jose office to work on transportation projects in 2006. Over the years, he says that building and strengthening these relationships has been incredibly valuable to his work.

His primary focus is transportation safety and connecting multi-modes of travel to mass transit. He enjoys working with local and regional agencies in developing robust and efficient transportation systems. One of his most notable BKF projects to date was managing the seismic retrofit of BART facilities throughout the Bay Area system in the mid-2000s. The fast pace of the work and complex problems involved motivated him to be on top of his game. “Working with such brilliant people was inspiring,” he said.