Marie Knapp, PE — partner, civil engineer.
Marie joined as partner in 2014 and brought the engineering discipline that turned the shop's job-by-job operating posture into a casebook-driven practice. Every dossier, every method statement, every BSA permit on this site has her sign-off. She is the foreman on every CIPP install, the lead estimator on every quoted job, and the BSA liaison on every coordinated city-side action. She runs the casebook.
§ I · Background
Marie graduated from the University at Buffalo with a B.S. in Civil Engineering in 2011. Her senior capstone was on infiltration-and-inflow modeling of the Erie County combined sewer overflow system, advised by Prof. Allan Plumb. After graduation she joined Arcadis North America as a junior engineer on the Niagara River Long-Term Control Plan team, working on hydraulic modeling of the Bird Island Pier sewershed under the federal CSO consent decree.1 She earned her NCEES Professional Engineer license in 2015.
From 2013 to 2014 she worked at the Buffalo Sewer Authority as a staff engineer in the Long-Term Control Plan implementation group, principally on the Smith Street and Hamburg Drain consolidation projects. She left BSA in mid-2014 because, in her own words, "the timeline from 'we should fix this thing' to 'we have fixed this thing' was running ten to fifteen years on the projects I cared about, and I wanted to do work that closed inside one calendar week." She joined Reuter as partner that October.
§ II · What she does at the shop
- Foreman on every CIPP install. The crew defers to her on cure-time, sleeve-thickness, and resin-chemistry decisions.
- Lead estimator. Every estimate that goes out goes through her arithmetic before it is sent.
- BSA liaison. She holds the standing relationship with BSA Compliance and Inspection (Marlon Yacoub, Eva Czerniewski, and Tom Marciniak rotate as inspectors on our jobs).
- Casebook editor. Every dossier in the published casebook is reviewed, anonymized, and edited by her before publication.
- Records. The Records page is hers; so is the lateral-jurisdiction analysis Buffalo News cited in 2023.
- Hires. She makes the final call on every hire (she has hired three of the seven non-founder crew members).
§ III · Certifications & credentials
| NCEES Professional Engineer | NY Lic. #098431 (since 2015) |
| UB B.S. Civil Engineering | 2011, magna cum laude |
| NASSCO PACP v8 | Cert. #PACP-2014-0392, recertified 2023 |
| NASSCO LACP | Cert. #LACP-2019-0118, recertified 2024 |
| OSHA 30 Construction | Current |
| Confined-Space Entry (NIOSH) | Current |
| Backflow Prevention Tester | NYSDOH Cert. #BFT-NY-2014, current |
§ IV · Publications
Marie has published two short articles in Trenchless Technology Magazine on residential lateral CIPP work in cold climates (2019, 2023) and one technical note in the NASSCO Newsletter on PACP coding consistency between contractor crews (2022). She has presented twice at the NASTT-Northeast regional conference. She is on the editorial board of the Buffalo Engineering Society quarterly bulletin (a volunteer role she has held since 2018).
§ V · Outside the shop
Marie was raised in Williamsville and lives in Black Rock, half a mile from the shop. She is a board member of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy (since 2021), with a particular focus on the Olmsted-era street tree program whose root systems show up so often in our casework — a circle she finds funny and useful in equal measure. She runs the half-marathon at the Buffalo Marathon every May, finishes between 1:48 and 1:54, has not improved her time in three years and does not seem worried about it.
References
- Buffalo Sewer Authority. Niagara River Long-Term Control Plan. Federal CSO consent decree compliance, 2014 amended. buffalosewer.org
- NCEES Council. Records of NY-licensed Professional Engineers. ncees.org