Construction industry is just managing

Washington legislators eager to fund construction of a Nursing Center in Spokane or an Academic Instruction Center in Bellingham might want to stop and ask themselves where the people will come from to oversee these multimillion dollar projects.

The state’s universities graduate maybe half the men and women needed to estimate costs, schedule the jobs, and oversee the construction itself. Work is done less efficiently. And projects managed poorly cost more and take longer, with overruns passed on to the taxpayer or business owner.

Inadequate funding ails many academic programs, particularly those in engineering and the sciences. But in discussing the effects of the money squeeze at Washington State University, President V. Lane Rawlins singled out Construction Management, which graduates just 25 majors annually.

Construction companies that have recruited on campus for years are crying for more help, he said, and students are begging to enroll. The faculty is not there to bridge the gap.

Max Kirk, coordinator of the construction management program, said he is one of only two professors in Pullman. There are two more in Spokane, where students take senior-year classes. One of the two Pullman positions is paid for entirely with $250,000 in industry contributions renewed every three years.

The University of Washington and Central Washington University also have four-year construction management programs, as does Boise State University in Idaho.

The 25 students who will earn construction management degrees from WSU must be culled from transfer applicants and 101 freshmen who know the odds are against them. Kirk says informing those who do not make the cut, many with grade-point averages above 3.0, is “heart-wrenching.” He encourages some students to pursue their management studies at the College of Business and Economics, which has its own enrollment problems. Some retake freshman classes hoping to lift their grades.

If they survive the four-year curriculum, graduates can expect multiple job offers at salaries starting between $45,000 and $50,000. All also receive summer internships. Kirk said industry could absorb another 5,000 construction managers nationally.

“We can place every student three times over,” he said.

At Boise State, which graduates about 30 construction management majors each year, Professor Marv Gabert says recruiters who show up in the spring hoping to hire go away empty-handed.

“They’re a year too late,” he says. Most students have a job when they complete internships between their junior and senior years. A student with four job offers is not unusual.

Dick Silliman, a principal of Hoffman Construction in Portland, would gladly hire more Cougars. A WSU graduate himself, as is one of the two other principals, Silliman said the firm has recruited in Pullman since the 1970s, and typically hires two or three graduates. UW and the University of Oregon are other sources.

Hoffman, which has partnered with Bouten Construction to build the new Spokane Convention Center exhibit hall, is among the firms that help pay for the second Pullman professor.

Silliman said contractors in the Northwest could hire twice the number of graduates available.

Wayne Brokaw, executive director of the Associated General Contractors chapter for the Inland Northwest, sits on the advisory board for the WSU construction management program. He said students unable to enroll are leaving Washington, never to return. And those who do graduate attract job offers for more money than most Spokane contractors are able to pay.

“I’ve got contractors who go without,” Brokaw said, adding that interns are in short supply, too.

Kirk and Gabert have their own ways of measuring the importance of the work their graduates do.

In Washington, Kirk said, contractors represent 10 percent of all companies, the largest share of any industry. Gabert said construction managers tend about eight percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. The need for graduates in the field is so great, he said, “We’ll never catch up.”

In carpentry, the most sought-after wonder tool is a board-stretcher capable or reversing every mismeasurement, and every errant cut. The region’s construction management programs need budget-stretchers.