City Shaper

Andres Marulanda Escobar (MPM '04) often finds himself surrounded by his work as he goes about daily life in his home city of Bogotá, Colombia.  

Andres is managing director at INGETEC, a global consulting and engineering firm focused on Latin American construction. But there in Bogotá, Andres enjoys the constant reminders of his firm’s impact on the city.  

“In this large city of 8 million people, a lot of the infrastructure has been designed by us,” he said. “From when you turn on the lights to when you open the tap for water to the metro bus system that you're using, we have been engaged in all of that infrastructure.” 

That impact is what motivates and excites Andres as he continues to apply lessons learned from his time in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Project Management (MPM) program.  

INGETEC routinely works on more than 100 projects at a time, often spread all over the world. While he enjoys the global nature of the business, it is the outsized effect of his work in Latin America that inspires Andres the most. The firm, where Andres has been since shortly after his MPM graduation, is currently involved in several major infrastructure projects across the region.   

One involves a dam design in Durango, Mexico, to help address climate-change-induced water scarcity. A second is an expansion project for the Panama Canal Authority—also responding to climate change—to create a massive dam and transfer tunnel to move water from a different watershed.  

The firm is also heading a project to renovate the century-old dam on Gatun Lake, which was created to form a central part of the Panama Canal.  

“Latin America is a developing economy in total, from Mexico to Chile, and there's a lot of need for infrastructure,” said Andres, who is the designated project manager on the firm's bigger projects. “The region as a whole has a lot of opportunities, but you really need to be selective on where and how you do business because it's not the same thing as doing it in the US.” 

Understanding communication nuances has also been crucial to Andres’ success in the region.  

“Even for us as Latin Americans, I often go to Mexico and think that I'm understanding what they're saying, and I don't understand it,” he said. “It’s not a matter of the language itself but of the subtleties. Those cultural differences can make a huge difference.” 

Andres credited MPM with helping him understand those differences. 

He already had professional experience from working as a geotechnical engineer when he applied to MPM. The program appealed to him because it provided industry-specific management skills that he felt would complement his technical knowledge. 

Takeaways from courses throughout  the MPM program have been vital to Andres’ ability to lead massive projects and motivate employees.  

“You cannot be a manager at 100,000 feet and not understand the details,” he said. “Yes, you have to zoom out, but you also have to zoom in and be very thorough with the technical requirements of the project.”  

That combination of in-depth understanding and big-picture thinking is what helps Andres oversee so many projects across Latin America and around the globe, including in countries like Turkey and India.  

“A lot of the projects we work on require fine-tuning of a wide variety of disciplines," he said. "Our capacity to do that in large projects is what differentiates us. And that's part of what you learn in MPM.”