Civil engineer Márcio Pellegrini’s latest personal feat combined two of the things he enjoys most in life, family and adventure. Last November, he finally made an old dream come true: riding his motorbike for 13,000 km (round trip) from São Paulo, Brazil, to Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, the southernmost town on the planet. In the company of his 27-year-old son Thiago, a lawyer, both driving 1200cc Adventure BMWs, they reached the “end of the world,” as the Argentines call that cold and sparsely inhabited region of their territory, after riding on forest trails and all kinds of roads in every type of traffic imaginable.

In the professional arena, his latest challenge began in January, when he became Regional Director of Foz do Brasil for the states of São Paulo, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. At the age of 55, having spent 29 of those years at Odebrecht, he has arrived at Foz with the aim of “contributing to its growth by developing new markets and grooming people.”

Márcio has worked as a Project Director on dozens of Odebrecht projects, standing out for his leadership skills and “spirit of service,” as he likes to say. So it was not surprising that he volunteered to lead the rescue team to save victims of the January 2007 accident at the Pinheiros Station construction site on Line 4 of the São Paulo Metro. A tunnel that was part of the station construction project under the responsibility of the Consórcio Via Amarela (a joint venture of Odebrecht, OAS, Queiroz Galvão, Camargo Correa and Andrade Gutierrez) had collapsed, causing the partial collapse of the walls of the access pit. As a result, a crater had opened on the surface.

“Those were the most exhausting 10 days of my life, and at the same time, the most rewarding. I learned more than I had in my previous 26 years at Odebrecht,” he recalls. “In the end, we managed to recover the bodies of seven victims and restore safety conditions at the site.” In recognition of their work, he and four other members of his team – engineers Nicolas Vasquez Tanwing, Josnei Cirelli and Mário César de Abreu, and general supervisor Orres Vicente da Silva – were awarded the Fire Department’s Centennial Medal, that institution’s highest honor.

There was just one incident on the 20-day journey to Ushuaia, which included a “side trip” to Chile via Bariloche before returning to Brazil. On their way south, after riding on rough trails in the interior of the Brazilian states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, the rear suspension of his bike broke down, forcing the pair to spend a few extra days in Porto Alegre to get it fixed. This changed part of the original plan of the trip – meeting up with his wife, Nancy, a mechanical engineer, and daughter Tatiana, 28, a dentist, in Buenos Aires, where the two women had traveled by plane.

“Since everything went well after that, despite the bitter cold in mid-November throughout southern Argentina, including heavy snow, we were able to meet up with them in Ushuaia as planned. There, we finally got together to celebrate the first leg of our adventure,” recalls Márcio, who is also a helicopter pilot and Navy skipper.

In his new professional challenge, Márcio Pellegrini is delving into a business area that is different from what he had been used to since he joined the Organization in 1981. Now, instead of running construction projects, an activity that has marked much of his career at Odebrecht, he will focus on winning and managing concessions and operating public sanitation and urban waste services. “Those areas may be different but the spirit is the same,” says Márcio. “My career has always been primarily fueled by three basic elements: willingness to serve, belief in people and overcoming challenges.”