About · Founder
Builder, operator, and advisor.
Elie Alchaer founded Altero to bring operator-grade construction discipline to projects that don't fit a generic GC box. Specializing in advanced facilities and life sciences environments, with experience across $1B+ of cumulative capital projects — vivariums, BSL-2 and cGMP laboratories, multi-tenant research facilities, and highly coordinated commercial developments.
Why Altero
Operator-driven design. Repeatable platforms.
The construction industry rewards heroics — pulling jobs out of the fire, custom-fitting every solution, billing for the complexity. Altero is built on the opposite belief: that the second job should always be easier than the first, and the thirtieth should feel like the same job done thirty times.
That philosophy comes from running a $200M active portfolio at SmartLabs, where standardizing lab layouts, bay modules, and MEP frameworks turned a sprawl of one-off projects into a repeatable platform. It comes from delivering $100M+ of high-end tenant improvement at WeWork, where fast-track schedules left no room for improvisation. It comes from shaping construction-tech product at Krane and advising at Slate AI — close enough to the technology to know what it can do, far enough from it to know when not to use it.
Altero is a California-licensed general contractor for life science, office, retail, and adjacent markets. Operators run the work. AI runs the workflow. We tell you what it costs before we tell you what we'd charge.
Credentials
Licensed, trained, published.
California Licensed General Contractor (Class B)
CSLB
M.Sc. Engineering & Project Management
UC Berkeley · 2017–2018
B.E. Civil Engineering, with Distinction
Lebanese American University · 2012–2017
Published research — construction productivity & benchmarking
Frameworks adopted in large capital programs
Career
From the field to the platform.
2025–Present
Founder & Principal
Altero Construction
Design-build and advisory practice for advanced facilities, life sciences developments, and complex commercial projects. Building internal estimating, margin, and performance systems for scalable delivery.
2022–2025
VP Strategy & Operations
Krane
Construction technology platform focused on productivity measurement, benchmarking, and digital delivery for large capital programs. Led strategy, partnerships, and product.
2020–2024
Director of Design & Construction
SmartLabs
Led delivery and portfolio strategy across $200M active and $150M under-design across vivariums, BSL-2, and cGMP environments. Standardized lab modules and MEP frameworks across multi-site platforms.
2019–2020
Project Manager
WeWork Construction
Delivered $100M+ of high-end tenant improvement and adaptive reuse across the Bay Area — including a $62M semi-occupied 22-story TI and a $17.5M HQ fit-out.
2018–2019
Associate Consultant
Turner & Townsend
Supported delivery of a $1.5B corporate campus and developed digital benchmarking workflows across a $12B capital program.
2012–2016
Superintendent / Scheduler
Al Shafar General Contracting · Dubai
Field execution and scheduling across a $1.15B mixed-use, hospitality, and retail portfolio in the UAE — including City Walk ($950M), The Onyx ($200M), and The ONE Tower ($300M).