At Cummins Cederberg we have some incredible employees, so we decided to make some waves and introduce you to those incredible people who make it all happen!
Rebecah Delp is a Marine Scientist and Project Manager responsible for providing environmental consulting services to clients in both the private and public sector. She works closely with our project engineers and performs marine and terrestrial biological assessments to locate natural resources (i.e. corals, seagrasses, wetland vegetation). This helps to ensure clients their project is designed to avoid and minimize adverse impacts to those resources.
Rebecah is also responsible for local, state, and federal environmental permitting. She acts as a liaison between these agencies and the project client. Organization, communication, and coordination are key elements to her role as a Project Manager, but being a Marine Scientist lets her “jump in the water” and conduct technical reports analyzing project impacts.
Rebecah volunteers with Rescue a Reef. Here she is measuring corals to prepare for outplanting
CC: What is a normal day for you?
RD: This can vary from day to day. Sometimes I’m in the office all day corresponding with clients and environmental agencies, writing reports, doing historical property research, and preparing permit application documents. Other days I’m performing marine resource surveys via SCUBA or conducting wetland delineations or maybe doing a tree survey. Occasionally I may be stationed in the Keys for a whole week conducting resource surveys in the field! It really depends on what projects we are conducting at the moment.
CC: How would you explain your job to a child?
RD: I’m a marine scientist that helps protect important resources, like seagrasses and corals, when people are building things along the water.
CC: What inspires you?
RD: I went to school for marine conservation and it’s something I’m really passionate about, so I like knowing my work helps protect the marine resources we have. Unfortunately, our oceans aren’t doing the best right now, and resources are dwindling. Everyone wants pretty ocean-view properties and easy access to the water, but many don’t consider that to keep the beautiful views and scenery, we must keep our waterways clean and protect the resources that keep them working properly. If we ignored the conservation of these resources during construction the impacts would be detrimental. My job keeps these impacts to a minimum, therefore lending a small helping hand to marine conservation.
Recent travels to Switzerland to visit the Swiss Alps!
CC: If you could switch jobs with anyone here, who and why?
RD: No way Jose! I’ve got the best job! I get to go into the field and play in the water and I really enjoy writing up the scientific field reports. No offense to our CAD and modeling team – what they can create is really cool – but I wouldn’t be able to sit in front of a computer all day every day. And I’m just being honest with myself when I say I’m not cut out to be an engineer… all of the math and physics would hurt my brain if I had to do it all the time. I do enjoy learning a little bit here and there from both of these teams though!
CC: What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you recently here?
RD: I almost got sucked up by a cargo ship performing an underwater survey. My colleague thought she lost me when the transect line I was on the other end of went slack. When I met her back on the boat she was in an all-out panic, but the current was so strong that I had accidentally let go of the transect line.
CC: What has been your favorite project so far?
RD: I really enjoyed the marine resource surveying project we worked on for the US Coast Guard in Key West last January. It was 5 days of seagrass and coral surveying and was one of my first larger surveying projects at Cummins Cederberg. The conditions were challenging, the water was freezing and the days were long. We were all exhausted at the end of each day and even going to get dinner seemed like a huge task, but it was fun to be in the field for a whole week collecting data. The team I worked with helped make it a great trip and writing the big field report after the data collection was fun too – identifying photos, crunching numbers, and analyzing data. I’m a nerd for that kind of stuff.
Te Fiti loves the beach!
CC: What’s something most people don’t know about you?
RD: I’m from the land-locked state of Pennsylvania. And then I went to the land-locked state of Ohio to study marine biology. Don’t worry, they sent me away to do all the cool marine bio stuff. I’m not sure where my passion for the ocean derived from, but I’ve been saying I wanted to be marine biologist since I was 5. After I finished undergrad, I knew I had to get to the coast. And now I don’t think I could ever go back!
Rebecah works in our South Miami office and enjoys bringing her coworkers together for office happy hours and team bonding events. She has a 2-year old rescue puppy named Te Fiti. Outside of the office, she enjoys volunteering with Rescue a Reef, traveling and taking weekend trips out of Miami, and having beach days with Te Fiti.
