As a kid, Patrick Alton was obsessed with Legos (Legos are a THING with engineers), mainly constructing castles and pirate ships. After graduating from NC State in 2003 with a BS in Civil Engineering, Patrick turned that passion for construction into a career. Being turned down by Lego did not dissuade Patrick from continuing his search for career satisfaction and he began his work focused mainly on construction materials testing and special inspections projects.
Once Patrick joined F&R to contribute to large budget materials testing and special inspections projects, the lure of geotechnical engineering became a permanent hook. In 2011, Patrick fully transitioned into the geotechnical department and began supervising large scale transportation projects (design-build & design-bid-build) and NCDOT projects through our on-call contract with the agency. Now, Patrick wears numerous hats – along with Santhosh Mahavadi, he manages the VERY busy Raleigh office, oversees the geotechnical services department and handles our geotechnical on-call contract with NCDOT for subsurface investigation and design services. While Patrick has determined that complex transportation projects are very rewarding he hasn’t given up hope of F&R winning the next awesome castle construction project or perhaps conducting some over water barge drilling aboard a pirate ship.
