Chris Moreno
Job Title: Project Manager
Company: Henkels & McCoy
Location: Kapolei, Hawaii
Age: 29
Years on the Job: 2
Interests: Reading, yoga, and exercising and practicing his Christian faith to keep his body and spirit strong
Following the end of Chris Moreno’s undergraduate studies in electrical and computer engineering, he grew a strong attraction to power systems.
“I was interested in how electricity was able to reach millions of people’s homes using basic electric and electromagnetic principles,” Moreno says.
After graduating with his bachelor’s degree, he secured an entry-level engineer position for a large Northeast coast utility company, where he received most of the training that formed who and where he is today.
“I was given many opportunities to work alongside and be mentored by leads in transmission and distribution design, utility construction and operations, finance and project management departments,” Moreno says. “Receiving mentorship in a broad spectrum of areas in a large company allowed me get exposure to all areas of a construction project in the electric utility sector.”
As he transitioned from an engineer to a project manager role, he was able to leverage his career expertise to understand all the inner workings of a project. To continue learning and growing, he tries to keep up with the evolution of technology and take additional classes or training from the Project Management Institute.
Moreno, who was born in New Jersey, now works in Hawaii, where construction can occur year-round due to favorable weather conditions. At the same time, logistics and supply chain lead times are double those of anywhere else, which forces project planning to be very detailed and constantly monitored.
As a project manager in Kapolei, he and his team focus on the replacement of aging overhead and underground infrastructure.
“With all of the salt in the air and high heat, the infrastructure takes quite a beating,” he says. “As a project manager, I work with customers to plan out and lead the safe execution of the replacement of their aging infrastructure.”
