Pinoy Tapped for WTC Rehab

The rebuilding of the devastated World Trade Center district has begun and a Queens-based Filipino-American owned engineering firm is playing a major part in it.

Rudell & Associates, Inc. is involved in engineering and conceptual design for all of Con Edison’s facilities such as substations, transmission, distribution and underground facilities which supplied most of the electricity for the wtc financial district and Lower Manhattan.

These facilities–housed at 7 World Trade Center, the 47-storey skyscraper next to the Twin Towers that was also destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack–are critically important to the future of the neighborhood and will be there for the next century.

The first building to rise from the ruins, WTC 7’s construction is expected to begin by June, with the proceeds of an $861 million insurance policy.

Larry A. Silverstein, who bought control of WTC 7 two months before the attack, said the new 50-storey building on Greenwich Street will have to be "spectacular because it’ll be the portal to the new World Trade Center."

Engr. Rudy C. Quiambao, founder and president of Rudell & Associates, a multi-discipline consulting engineering services, said the project is equally vital for the firm’s image and reputation as a minority-owned business.

"This can either make us or break us," Quiambao said recently in an interview at his Elmhurst office.

"If we succeed in a project of this magnitude, nobody will question our capability," he explained. "This is a high-profile project which will seal any doubts about a minority-owned company like us."

Not that Rudell & Associates delivers less exceptional works. However, in a tightly competitive marketplace like New York, minority and women-owned businesses are often sideswiped by the more influential mainstream oldtimers in the grab for multi-million contracts.

But Quiambao and other minorities are slowly breaking any glass ceilings to pave the way for thousands of others who will enter the marketplace for the first time or expand into new areas, according to Eugene R. McGrath, chairman, president and ceo of Con Edison.

For the WTC 7 project, Quimbao met with Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other important people involved in the restoration of the wtc area, including architect David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which was commissioned to design the WTC 7 and conceptual plans for the twin towers site.

"Con Edison gave us the task because they know the quality of our work, they know the capability of our people, and they know that we can deliver," says Quiambao, a native of Sta. Ana, Pampanga.

"But I worry a lot," he laughs, "because we reached a certain stage where we maintain a high standard and people expect a lot from us. If our mainstream competitors give their 100 percent to a project, we try to give 200 percent or more. If we will only equal our competitors, a client will not get us."

Rudell & Associates is credited with numerous remarkable projects–from the construction of the John F. Kennedy International Airport Terminal 4, where they developed the architectural and structural designs and fabrications drawing for the all the interior structures; the engineering and design for the installation of the main substation of the New York Post newspaper production facility in the Bronx; to the ongoing erection of the Iglesia Ni Cristo Church in Forest Hills, Queens covering all aspects of architectural and engineering disciplines.

From some 30 major projects Rudell & Associates handled in 2000, the number jumped to 80 in 2001.

"The secrets here is to win the trust of your client." Quiambao says. "Make sure what you say is right and you’re committed and honest. You can always mislead them in the beginning, but the end result or the product of your work will always reveal who you are. If a clients finds out you deceived them, then you lose that client and that’s the end of it."

Coming from a very poor family, Quiambao worked full-time to earn a civil engineering degree from the Mapua Institute of Technology. He worked for five years at the Department of Public Works in the Philippines before immigrating to the U.S. in April 1968 to join Boeing Company in Seattle.

Two years later, he moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where he worked as a project engineer for highways, bridges and urban revewal programs with Cahn Engineers. It was there where he met his wife of 30 years, Dr. Connie Galvez- Quiambao, who has a thriving practice in New York. They moved to New York City in August 1973, where he worked for two years wih Chemplany Design, Inc., designing chemical and waste treatment plants, and 13 years for Treadwill Corporation, where he served as engineering consultant at the Con Edison Indian Nuclear Power Plant in Buchanan, N.Y.

With extensive experience in various disciplines of engineering, Quiambao formed Rudell & Associates in June 1998 as a full service engineering, design and consulting company providing engineering, design and project management services in areas ranging from nuclear and fossil power generating plants and substations to industrial and commercial facilities.

For the first few years, there were just him and two of his associates. But through hard work and determination, Con Edison’s Minority Business Program qualified him as a member of their program.

For five consecutive years, his picture, together with selected minority entrepreneurs, was used by Con Edison in its billboard and magazine ads appearing at almost all New York substations.

Today, Rudell & Associates has a staff of 43–85 percent of whom are Filipino.

"I could not have done it without my wife’s full trust and support," Quiambao beams. " I wouldn’t have had the guts to put up this firm without my wife because I relied on her– she has a steady income to pay our bills and mortgages, while I was starting the company. She has been my inspiration and motivator to reach my goals."

A member of the National Society of Professional Engineers, Quiambao is the co-founder and second president of the Filipino-American Association of Engineers (faae).

For two years, he raised faae’s membership to more than 300 and updated its members on the latest innovative advances in engineering through lectures and seminar workshops.

The Asian-American Democratic Association of Queens, Inc. and Merrill Lynch honored him for his community contribution and dedication to support and mentor numerous Filipino engineers, including those who have just arrived in the U.S.