Jeffrey Treffinger moved to New Orleans from his native New Jersey in 1978. He attended Tulane University School of Architecture where he received a Masters Degree in 1985. He worked as an architectural historian for R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates; a cultural resource management firm that contracted from the Corps of Engineers and other Federal agencies. In 1987, the Corps hired Goodwin & Associates to assess the historic significance of the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Lock; he studied the design of the lock in order to determine its importance within the historic context of mechanical engineering. Upon leaving Goodwin and Associates, Mr. Treffinger worked for another cultural resource management firm named Earth Search and the Tulane University Architectural Coalition. Under subsequent Corps of Engineer contracts, he conducted pedestrian architectural surveys of the Holy Cross, Lower 9th Ward and Bywater Neighborhoods. These studies focused on defining any negative impacts to historic districts that would be caused by the project. At that time, many homes were slated for demolition to make way for the new lock. Mr. Treffinger has managed his own design build firm since the mid-1990’s and has been a member of the Coalition Against Widening the Industrial Canal (CAWIC) since the Corps began pushing this project again in earnest in 2015.