As the second employee of PRIME AE, Ruel has had the chance to see the company grow to what our company is today. We asked him what it has been like from the ground-up to witness so much growth, Ruel said, “I think it’s been a good transformation and amazing how quickly time flies. At the core of it, if you believe in what you’re doing, and do a good job, everything will take care of itself.”
So how did Ruel become what he is today? “I came from a family of engineers and architects,” he says, “it’s something I knew from the beginning.” Ruel described his upbringing and how he and his family first lived in the City of Pasay, which is a suburb in the Capitol of the Philippines. His parents came over to the U.S. to set up their new home, and then a year later – 1989 – Ruel and his three siblings moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and it’s been home ever since. “My father did some civil engineering, but he never completed it, so I guess I’m fulfilling his aspirations.” One of his favorite engineering projects that he worked on includes the Rehabilitation of Anacostia Freeway Bridges over Nicholson Street for the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). This project necessitated the bridge be built off-site and then brought to the project site to be put in place once completed to help decrease traffic issues in the area. When asking Ruel what he has done in his civil engineering career that he is most proud of, and he says, “I think I’m most proud of what I’ve accomplished to date, some of the structures I’ve been a part of, that I’ve seen get constructed. I aspire for bigger things and hopefully they will come. To see the things that you designed, detailed, and put some thought in get built, it’s really nice to see.”
Ruel told us about what he likes to do in his free time when he’s not at PRIME AE performing his structural engineering duties: “So, when I’m not working, I like to spend quality time with my family, either relaxing at home or on a road trip. Anywhere. A vacation. A small road trip here or there. I do like cooking when I have time, so weekends are actually my cooking days.” He says his cooking specialties include anything breakfast related, spaghetti, preparing a good steak, and barbeque.” A fun fact about Ruel that he shared with us is that he ordered a chef’s coat from Amazon and will wear it to cook for his wife and family, saying “it makes the meal a little bit more special.”
