For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Brian Roche, and I’m a Civil Designer for Terrain in Annapolis, Maryland. After starting as an intern in November 2024, I was fortunate to accept a full-time position this past May. While that may sound like a straightforward series of events, it was anything but.

I studied economics at the University of Maryland, at the time assuming my career path was laid out before me. I never thought I’d have the flexibility to pursue interests or opportunities outside of my major. That was until Terrain graciously offered me an internship during my senior year, which led me to explore a field I had never considered.

Coming from economics, I’ve found that many skills I developed now translate surprisingly well into civil design. Economics is ultimately the study of human behavior and how people make decisions, respond to incentives and use limited resources. It requires you to pay close attention to detail and base future decisions on past population trends. To my surprise, these principles have helped me approach engineering problems more effectively.

Instead of studying human behavior, I now consider the behavior of the land. In design work, I’m constantly weighing trade-offs, prioritizing constraints and thinking about how each choice will affect the people using the final product. When a development is completed, and we go to as-builts, I use that step to evaluate the previous trends. How could this be improved during the next design? Were there any issues that contractors faced during the construction that we could have prevented?

My background in data analysis and systems thinking has also helped me break complex design challenges into manageable parts and evaluate the most efficient solutions. Those habits made the transition into AutoCAD, grading and layout work feel more intuitive, because I’m used to looking at problems from both big-picture and detailed perspectives.

What started as a surprise opportunity has turned into a career I’m genuinely passionate about. I’m excited to keep taking on new challenges, expanding my skills and contributing to projects that shape the communities around us.