The job market for civil engineers looks solid. That's the view of Dr Errol C. Noel, chairman of the civil engineering department at Howard University (Washington, DC). He believes the near future will see an increased need for civil engineers, since the nation's aging infrastructure demands continual upgrading.
Dr Noel notes, "You don't have to go to the hinterlands to find employment. Civil engineers are needed in metropolitan centers and urban and suburban areas."
Howard University had eighty civil engineering students in 2004, fourteen of them seniors. "All our CE graduates found employment quickly," says Dr Noel, who credits the university's reputation and on-campus recruiting activities.
The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT, Newark, NJ) reports that its CE grads found jobs in design consulting, construction management and public agencies (an estimated 40/40/20 percent breakdown). Among the school's 1,000 May 2004 graduates were forty-one CEs.
Salaries are up
For new-grad CEs in the workplace, there's good news on the salary front. The Summer 2004 Salary Survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE, www.naceweb.org), reports CE graduates saw a 1.7 percent increase in starting salary offers over 2003, making their average starting salary $42,053.
The NACE 2004 Job Outlook cites a top-ten list of what employers look for: communication skills, both verbal and written, are number one. Also highly desirable are interpersonal skills, initiative, teamwork and flexibility. CEs, of course, must also demonstrate their analytical and computer proficiency and technical competence.
Diversity is a team effort
Hiring companies affirm the positive business aspects of recruiting diverse candidates.
Dennis Evans, a recruiter with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago (MWRD, Chicago, IL), says the district invites current employees to join professional recruiters on visits to campus job fairs. "What better way to tell our story to potential employees than to have a current employee relay his or her on-the-job experiences?"
Richard Caster, vice president of corporate community resources and diversity at program management and construction services company Bovis Lend Lease (New York, NY), says, "It's important to put a face behind the company logo. That's why relationships with minority student advocacy groups like AMIE, NSBE, SHPE and Inroads are so important."
A number of recent civil engineering hires shared their on-the-job experiences with Diversity/Careers.
Marilyn Fox found Parsons Brinckerhoff at a job fair
Marilyn Fox attended a campus job fair at Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA) in October 2001. "I left my resume and application with lots of companies," says Fox. "Job fairs are a great way to see and be seen by potential employers, and right on campus, too."
In March 2002, Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB, Princeton, NJ) called her in for an interview. She joined the company after she received her BSCE from Drexel in 2002. PB is a planning, engineering, and program and construction management company.
"I concentrated on structures at school," she says, "because I wanted to do something where you could see your work. I like the idea of driving along a road and knowing that a culvert might belong to me."
At PB, Fox is in the civil highway department. "There's a great mix of expertise in my group and I can ask anybody for help whenever I need direction," she says with pleasure. She's acquired a good deal of technical proficiency herself, particularly with the Bentley MicroStation, a computer- aided design drafting tool, and Intergraph's InRoads software for design and modeling.
A native of Bristol, PA, a small town outside Philadelphia, Fox attended an all-girls high school where there were just seventy students in her graduating class. She went on to Pennsylvania State University's Abington Ogontz campus for two years before transferring to Penn's main campus (State College, PA). She says, "I lasted one year at the main campus. The experience was overwhelming for me, coming from a small town background."
Fox transferred to Drexel, commuted by train, and worked as a part-time EMT ambulance driver.
Fox firmly believes in keeping her options open. Her advice for soon-to-graduate students: "Don't be afraid to move on. Before I joined PB, I worked for another company for just two months. I left because the job turned out not to be what I expected. Others told me it might look bad on my resume, but I knew that job wasn't what I wanted."
Fox can now say, "I love what I'm doing." In just two years on the job, she's had broad experience at PB.
She's been involved in preparing roadway plans and right-of-way documents for Route 73 in Camden County, NJ. That project includes new traffic patterns, a signalized intersection and drainage improvements, as well as a community outreach program.
She's also contributed to roadway work on Route 202 in Hunterdon County, NJ, preparing right-of-way and access plans. Her newest assignment involves Route 72 in Ocean County, NJ, located in an environmentally sensitive area that requires feasibility assessment along with designs for bridges and highway sections.
Fox says, "I've worked on big jobs and small, which is great for learning. If I feel I need more experience in a particular area, my project manager and team leader do their best to help me get it."
Fox is busy personally as well as professionally - she was married this past June.
Marcus Anthony Pelle: hired on the spot at Bovis Lend Lease
Born in Yonkers, New York, Marcus Anthony Pelle was just eight months old when his family immigrated to the south of England.
"I grew up in Basingstoke, about fifty miles south of London," he says. After attending Queen Mary's College, a nearby secondary school, he studied at Loughborough University in the center of England, spending time on two of his major interests, engineering and soccer. Enrolled in a five-year program of study, Pelle earned a masters in civil engineering in 1999.
As a student participating in local programs of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), an international technical society, Pelle especially appreciated the networking opportunities and mentoring he got from industry representatives.
He enjoyed history and geography in school, but was particularly fascinated with science and engineering. "My dad was a carpenter who had access to a lot of construction sites," Pelle explains, "He'd often introduce me to a project manager who would show me around. As a six- or seven-year-old, I was thrilled to be getting a VIP tour."
Pelle's appreciation of technology continued as he studied the history of Greek and Roman achievements in engineering and architecture. "I definitely found something to aspire to," he says.
During his university days, he often worked as a construction intern, sometimes without pay. "The wide range of experiences with different companies was what I wanted. Being close to construction sites gave me important, hands-on experience."
After university, Pelle returned to the United States, where he worked in direct sales for about two years marketing entertainment complexes, salons and boutiques.
He says, "It was very different from engineering, but I wanted to challenge myself, broaden my exposure."
In 2003, Pelle drove by a Bovis Lend Lease (BLL) construction site and stopped to talk to the project manager. "I recognized the company name from my years in England and I was eager to get back into engineering," he says. He got a job offer and started the next day.
Pelle is a project engineer in BLL's site personnel department. He oversees day-to-day operations, from supervising subcontractors to expediting permits, for a $60 million residential center project. The project, Fairfield Dadeland, includes two buildings and a condominium tower in the center of Miami, FL. Fifteen field and office personnel are involved full time and, depending on the number of subcontractors on the job, the project can involve as many as eighty people.
Pelle's current project will take a year and a half to complete. After that, he's looking ahead to broadening his construction services experience. "Whether you're working on a commercial site, a hospital or airport, the experiences are different every time and always challenging you in new ways."
His own experience can be instructive to other new grads, he feels. "Don't be afraid to knock on doors. Look to start off small, learn and work your way up."
In Pelle's view, the advantage of a CE degree is the broad educational background. "Match that with a wide range of work experience and you're ahead on the playing field," says Pelle.
On the soccer field, Pelle plays center position most weekends.
Fred Wu: supporting water quality at MWRD
Fred Wu is an assistant civil engineer for Chicago's Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. A government agency, the district protects the water quality of Lake Michigan, the area's major source of drinking water.
Wu got interested in the science of water in high school. "We were studying earth sciences, and every class was outdoors, weather permitting," Wu says. "Our teacher would have us flip over rocks to study the organisms living underneath. He told us that the life under the rocks is one key to gauging the health of the stream, and this fascinated me."
In college, he worked part time as an environmental researcher and a teaching assistant during his senior year. "I'm the only techie in my family," he admits. "Everyone else is into business."
Wu notes, "I enjoy both math and science, and working in hydrology at MWRD gives me the best of both."
A native Midwesterner, Wu grew up in Moreland Hills, a Cleveland, OH suburb. In 2002, he earned a BSCE from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, IL), where he was active in a student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). "I represented ASCE at engineering councils and helped organize educational civil engineering exhibits for the community," he says.
Before coming to MWRD, Wu worked briefly for a consulting company, doing site development, river modeling and flood-plain analysis. He heard about MWRD through friends. "I'd heard a lot of good things about the district, so I checked out the website and sent in my resume."
After filling out an application and taking a civil-service exam, Wu was ranked and put on a waiting list, the standard procedure for government positions. "When I got the phone call to come in, I'll admit it was a little intimidating because I was interviewed by a panel of four MWRD department representatives."
With the district since 2003, Wu is involved in sewer design. His work impacts MWRD's 547 miles of intercepting sewers, an underground highway of pipes ranging from twelve inches to twenty-seven feet in diameter, all fed by some 10,000 local sewer connections. Wu's job entails retrofitting the old pipes by lining them with epoxy-impregnated felt.
Wu notes that most of Chicago's infrastructure was built in the early twentieth century. "It's interesting to see that handmade pipes are performing well after almost one hundred years of service."
A registered engineer in training, Wu plans to take his PE exam in two years. Eventually, he'd like to work in MWRD's wastewater reclamation area. "As a sewer designer, I'm looking at one phase of the collection process. Working at the wastewater treatment plant will help me understand the complete process, from user collection to treatment."
Kate Noteboom: action-packed days at DMJM+Harris
Kate Noteboom is enthusiastic about her work as a traffic engineer in training at the Phoenix offices of DMJM+Harris. The company does design work for large energy, environmental, transportation and marine projects. "I'm learning the ropes and my days here are definitely more intense that anything I experienced at school."
She says her academic experiences were good technical preparation, but acknowledges there's definitely a transition from the academic world to the workplace. "You might say you feel several shades of green in your first days on the job, but I'm getting lots of guidance from the people around me."
Noteboom was an intern at DMJM+Harris before she graduated from Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) in 2003 with a BSCE. Her first interest was environmental, so she worked on wastewater projects during her internship. "Environmental is very different from transportation where I am now, but I liked the company and when they offered me a position in transportation, I jumped at the chance," she says.
At DMJM+Harris, Noteboom works on construction plans, performs traffic impact studies, and does transportation modeling, traffic signal and lighting design and operational analyses. Her next assignment will take her from her home in Mesa to the city of Glendale, AZ two days a week as a DMJM+Harris subcontractor for the city.
Noteboom's heritage is Mexican American. Her grandmother was born in Aguascalientes in southern Mexico. And while her grandfather was born in the U.S., he lived in Mexico for some time. Her unusual last name, she explains, is Dutch, compliments of her father's side of the family.
Noteboom's parents supported her interest in math and science, but her uncle, a CE, was her mentor. She says, "I stayed with him in Tempe while I was going to school to save rent money, since my parents live in Lancaster, CA."
Noteboom also found career guidance from student chapters of ASCE and the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program at school.
Noteboom's undergraduate studies took five and a half years because she started at a two-year school, Antelope Valley in Lancaster, CA, and not all of her credits transferred. "The opportunity my uncle gave me to live with him and learn from his professional experience was worth the change," she says.
Today, Noteboom is active in the Institute of Transportation Engineers (www.ite.org), a professional organization that she finds stimulating professionally and socially. "We're involved in community education programs to promote student interest in technical careers. That's important to me because I'm grateful for the support I got from family and teachers."
Noteboom is registered with the State of Arizona as an engineer in training and is working toward her PE license. "I'm on the first step of my career path and I'm determined to excel. Sometimes it's daunting, but that's why I was drawn to a technology career in the first place!"
Tia Taylor: intern to full time at HNTB
A civil engineer in the HNTB Companies' transportation design department (Austin, TX), Tia Taylor says, "I have real responsibilities. From the very first moment, I felt I was making important contributions to my team, and I'm learning every day."
HNTB is a public infrastructure design, engineering and planning services firm, headquartered in Kansas City, MO.
Taylor has determined flood plains for maps, worked on the Austin office website, charted contour lines for projects and performed red-line corrections for design plans.
Taylor grew up in Beaumont, TX. She credits a high school counselor and an undergraduate advisor with guiding her to an engineering career. "Structures fascinated me," she says. "One of my professors in wood design was a great mentor. He gave me that extra push."
Taylor earned a BS in architectural engineering in 2004 from the University of Texas at Austin. As a college student, she was drawn to architecture. "One of my favorite classes was on the history of architecture and society."
She completed an internship in architectural engineering with the Texas Department of Transportation, where she assisted in the renovation of district offices. "It was a great experience," she says, "but I enjoyed my second internship in civil engineering with HNTB even more!"
As an HNTB intern, Taylor helped evaluate the conditions of asphalt overlays on county roads, got involved in the project-bidding process and performed field-engineering surveys. At the end of the internship, HNTB offered Taylor a full-time slot. "I started the internship in October 2003 and was offered a full-time position in June 2004," she says.
Taylor has made a comfortable adjustment to her work at HNTB. "The company provides 'ambassadors,' experienced employees who serve as mentors to new hires," she explains.
Taylor was very involved in extracurricular activities as a student. She was a member of ASCE and held many offices with the National Society of Black Engineers, including serving as publications chair and alumni liaison.
Taylor has a five-year career plan focused on attaining a PE license. She explains, "It takes four-and-a-half years of on-the-job training under a licensed PE, plus an exam, to earn a license.
"I'm in the design area now, but HNTB offers a lot of options. One is the construction services area where engineers go out into the field as managers to oversee projects for owners."
But that's the future. For now, Taylor is taking seriously all the opportunities available to her at HNTB.
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