Experience

The principals of the firm have backgrounds in engineering, economics, business, and planning. Our prior consulting experience includes work at Booz Allen Hamilton, Kaku Associates, Nelson Nygaard, Scient Corporation, and Towers Perrin. In addition to our consulting, the firm’s partners have worked at several public and private organizations, including the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District, California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Citicorp, MTA New York City Transit, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Tarek Hatata has more than 32 years of consulting experience spanning the transportation engineering, planning and policy, management consulting, and information technology spaces. He specializes in managing large, complex, and strategically vital projects for public sector clients requiring solid technology skills, long-term vision, and skilled in delicate decision-making processes. Mr. Hatata led the San Diego 805 Corridor System Management Plan (CSMP), overseeing performance assessment, modeling, improvement scenario development and evaluation, and identifying transportation management system and operational (TSMO) strategies.

Tom Choe, P.E. has over 30 years of professional experience as a transportation professional. Prior to joining System Metrics Group, he served as an Office Chief and Supervising Traffic Engineer for Caltrans District 7 in Los Angeles and a Principal of Kaku Associates. While at Caltrans, he worked in Districts 3, 4, and 7 and in the Headquarters Division of Traffic Operations. Mr. Choe oversees and manages the Los Angeles office. His expertise is in highway operations and engineering, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Integrated Corridor Management (ICM), and technology projects. Mr. Choe’s experience includes planning, development, and management of traffic management systems, freeway operations and management, and incident management projects and programs.

William McCullough has over 31 years of experience in transportation planning, benefit-cost economic analysis, equity analysis, active transportation, environment analysis. and transportation performance measurement. His experience spans planning for mobility hubs and bikeshare to the evaluation of GHG reduction strategies managed lane evaluations, transit service planning, and system performance monitoring. He leads large-scale, multi-disciplinary corridor and regional analyses. He is SMGs lead for “big data” analytics and evaluations. Mr. McCullough recently helped to evaluate the traffic impacts of pricing strategies in the region and also led a technical evaluation of the impacts of SB-743 for SCAG.

Naree Kim, P.E. has over 20 years of professional experience in the delivery of transportation and traffic engineering projects, with experience that includes the planning, design, and deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and traffic signal projects. Ms. Kim has delivered PS&E packages for traffic signal system upgrades, fiber optic communication networks, freeway traffic management systems, as well as other traditional traffic handling, signing and pavement delineation plans. She has also managed signal timing development and implementation for several agencies. She provides solutions to traffic problems while effectively managing budgets and scope of work. Ms. Kim is committed to providing sustainable transportation design with an emphasis on systems engineering analysis and utilization of emerging technologies. Her software experience includes Autodesk AutoCAD, Microstation, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power Point, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Visio, Agi32. Ms. Kim is currently leading the PS&E work for the I-710 ICM Design project and Irvine Slurry Seal Projects for SMG.

Recent clients include: