Mauricio Lammardo
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
I’ve been working in our São Paulo coastal engineering office for almost 13 years. Tetra Tech has given me the opportunity to take courses and trainings to expand my professional skills. Tetra Tech has also expanded my professional horizons and given our group the opportunity to work with other multidisciplinary teams throughout the company who have broad expertise in different fields.
Mauricio Lammardo, operations manager for Tetra Tech’s coastal engineering unit in São Paulo, Brazil, balances many aspects of project operations. Mauricio’s project work has taken him all over the world including Peru, Trinidad, the United States, and cities throughout Brazil. While his current work mainly keeps him in the office, Mauricio works on a project with the São Paulo’s Port Authority that requires him to conduct training for every dredge operator who arrives in Brazil, often on the barge during the operation.
While I’m generally at the office from about 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., I also check my emails at home and follow up on details that need to be addressed.
Most of my projects are developed entirely at the office, but some of my work requires visits to project sites to get a better understanding of the situation, conduct training, or complete field surveys.
Our office is located in the most populous city in Brazil. While we are surrounded by commotion, our office is in a calm place, which helps us get the work done. At the office, we like to keep a positive work environment to strengthen relationships among our unit’s staff, as well as with other units. We sometimes even barbeque and play soccer with another nearby Tetra Tech office.
In our office, we work with numeric models including Delft3D, OSCAR/DREAM, and CORMIX. We also develop programs in Matlab to help us post-process the model’s outputs.
I love working at Tetra Tech because I get to work with a multidisciplinary team in which I’m able to use and share my knowledge about oceanography and project management. We also have a flexible work environment, which makes it a perfect place to work.
A Day in the Field: Ensuring daily operational success and carrying out effluent modeling projects
- Name:
- Mauricio Lammardo
- Position:
- Operations Manager
- Field Work Location:
- Vila Madalena, a bohemian quarter of São Paulo
- Task:
- Maintain project operations within the office, work with and train project managers (PMs), work with office staff on effluent modeling and GIS-related projects
- Office:
- Our office is located in a cozy 3-story white house
- Weather:
- Spring days in São Paulo usually include cold mornings and nights (13-15 °C) and warm afternoons (24-25 °C)
- 5:00
- Have a mug of Brazilian coffee and get ready for the day
- 6:30
- Catch up on work-related issues with my wife, our business development director, on the way to the office—in an hour-long traffic jam!
- 7:45
- Arrive at the office, check email, organize the day’s priorities
- 8:30
- Meet with staff, including weekly planning meetings on Monday, project manager training on Tuesday, and kick-off meetings for our new projects throughout the week
- 9:30
- Work on effluent modeling projects, most of which are related to environmental permits, as well as outfall systems design projects
- 12:00
- Lunch—hang out with other managers and talk about soccer, a Brazilian addiction, and other non-work-related topics
- 13:00
- Check in with every project manager about project needs and how I can mobilize the staff to help with development of their projects
- 14:00
- Work on project supervision and addressing the needs the project managers identified
- 15:00
- Work on an effluent modeling project
- 17:30
- Leave work and pick up my son from daycare, enduring more traffic on the way home
- 18:30
- Dinner and some quality family time—on Tuesday and Thursday this time is brief because I’m finishing up my second degree in managing processes
- 22:00
- After my son is in bed, check email for any new demands that have to be taken care of, then get ready for the next day
