Paul Richardson: It's your turn

It was March 1, 1979, and my first day of work with Missouri State Highway Department. When I was hired at an entry level position, most of the staff in that division and each of the field offices, were my parents age. There were a few older World War II era men, and a few younger, but most were my parents age and several of them had went to school with my parents.

Many of the older men that filled engineering positions were very old school and many were self-taught in the area of civil engineering. Some had been introduced to the discipline while serving in their respective branches of the military, either the Army Corp of Engineers or the Navy Construction Battalion. 

Upon completing their service in the military, they had found a place in various agencies, with consulting firms or contractors. In the early years, if one could take the professional engineers test and pass, the State of Missouri would bestow a PE title and you could hang out a shingle or fill a position that required that endorsement. 

Due to this arrangement, there existed at least one engineer, to my knowledge, with a PE certificate, who only had a formal education background through the eighth grade. He had, with access to the best reference materials and information, studied and self-taught his way into completion of the professional engineer's certificate.

Due to the opportunities that existed with access to testing, those with engineering positions and certification, were pretty possessive with the reference material. They viewed anyone with intelligence and ability as a potential threat, as the jobs were very competitive and limited.

By the time that I arrived, the state agency was in the process of hiring a greater number of graduate engineers, but due to the salary structure, that was limited. The next best thing was individuals that had been engineering students and for some reason or another had never finished. These individuals had the qualities needed but had moved off of the path to completion due to a variety of circumstances. During my career, if you had not graduated with a bachelor’s in engineering, you could still take the PE exam at the age of fifty and twenty years of field experience. That window closed on or about 2007.

At some point about the middle of my career, all of the older staff were at retirement age or had already retired. It was at this point that I began to receive all of the feedback that some of them had been experiencing. 

During the height of the season, one would often find a retiree on the jobsite, revisiting old memories. Maybe they missed the noise of the equipment, or the smell of the soil, the constant movement and activity, or they just didn’t have anything else to do, but there would always be an assessment of the abilities and results that the current staff was achieving. I was pretty exempt from any criticism, due to the fact that these guys had raised me, and I had been their pup. 

Any criticism of me would have been a confession of their failure to raise me properly. But let me tell you, they would certainly give a ready assessment of the remainder of the crew. Nothing was being completed the way that “we did it in the past”, and “this road will never hold up.” 

A short time later we would be reconstructing a location that had been under the oversight of these same retirees and would expose all of the sins that had been hidden during the activity many years ago. I’m not saying it was the fault of the retired employees, contractors could be sneaky, but the world wasn’t perfect then as it isn’t now.

I find myself in that group that has had their day. We done our best. It wasn’t perfect, but we tried to leave things in a better state than we had found it. You are going to find some “monuments to ignorance”, but keep in mind that you will leave some of those behind also.

The goodwife and I were at some gathering recently and she noted, “There are a lot of young people here.” Well, that is good and that is the way it should be. I can’t keep doing everything for everybody. Sometimes, I just need to pass the baton. I have done that in more than one instance. I have never revisited a heavy highway jobsite since leaving the department on March 1, 2010. If you want me to do something, leave me alone and let me do it my way, I will do the same for you. As I let you do it your way, keep in mind that even if you are attempting to re-create the wheel, it’s your turn now. Good luck with that!