Arcos was founded in May 1969 by the engineers Pedro Elísio da Silva and Ronei Filgueiras, both co-workers and former employees of CARPE, a Brazilian State Government Agency.

The name Arcos was inspired by the anticlastic curvature, in order to innovate the art of design and to build modern structures.

The initial idea of building new elements was changed in the 1970s by the willing to work with geotechnical services. So, Arcos had expanded its technical knowledge in soil engineering in all types of foundation.
In early 1980s, few years after creating it, Pedro Elísio started testing deep foundations with his new method: the Hydrodynamic Expansive Cell. The first commercial application took place in 1981 in Belo Horizonte and it has never stopped since then. Patented in Brazil by Arcos, the Expancell is a sacrificial hydraulic jack designed to run static loading test on pile foundation without a reaction system.
In 1983 Pedro Elísio wrote a book about it: “Hydrodynamic Expansive Cell, a new way to perform loading test” and in 1986 published an article in an important Soil Conference in Brazil, the VII COBRANSEG in Porto Alegre. Since then Arcos has been a reference developing efficient technologies that bring more safety and economy for the engineering works.