Civil Engineering Co-ops Help Prepare for Fast-Paced Building and Construction Career
With co-ops atop buildings under construction in Boston, Massachusetts, Ralph Noblin, E’76, learned the fundamentals of civil engineering and how to effectively manage building projects, skills that helped him launch a successful career that included running his own consulting business for 25 years.
Ralph Noblin, E’76, civil engineering, has always thrived on a busy schedule.
At 15 years old, Noblin picked up part-time work with a residential construction crew and kept that job through high school, while he did well in school, particularly in math, and excelled in both football and baseball.
He initially attended Worchester Polytechnic Institute, but transferred to Northeastern during his sophomore year because he believed it would provide him with more opportunities, specifically co-ops and participation in Division 1 sports. While he loved playing football and baseball for Northeastern, it was the co-op experience that had the greatest impact on his career.
“The co-ops emphasized the seriousness of work,” Noblin says. “There are a lot of people who don’t take what they do seriously. Because of the co-ops, I was essentially saying to people, ‘I’m a serious guy looking for a serious career.’”
His first co-op was with Vappi & Co. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was assigned to the John W. McCormick State Office Building construction site in Boston. The building was completed in 1975. Accustomed to working on one- or two-story residential buildings, Noblin joined the work crew on the 17th floor. “There I was, hundreds of feet off the ground, surrounded by steel beams,” Noblin says.
He worked as a site engineer assisting the chief engineer who determined the location for internal beams, columns and walls for offices, restrooms, and public areas. “There was a lot to it,” Noblin adds. “It was a real job with real responsibility.”
Because of a strong job performance, he was hired for a second co-op at Vappi, this time working at the Charlestown Savings Bank construction site in Boston. While this building was only nine stories high, it still provided Noblin with lasting memories of looking down on the busy Summer Street in the heart of the city.
On both job sites, he took time to watch how supervisors interacted with workers and vice versa.
“I was impressed by the professionalism the super showed the workers and vice versa,” Noblin adds.
From those observations, he began to develop communications and public speaking skills that have helped him throughout his career. “Engineers at some point in time have to communicate effectively so the people they are working for have faith in them,” he says.
Noblin recalls graduating from Northeastern on a Saturday in May 1976 and starting his first full-time job that Monday at J. Abrams Construction Co. in Brookline. He says J. Abrams and other Boston-area construction firms were eager to hire Northeastern engineering graduates.
“The firms knew that the Northeastern job candidates would be ready to roll,” Noblin says.
Over the next 15 years, Noblin worked for various construction and engineering firms and developed expertise in building envelope technology and materials such as roofing and asphalt paving. At times he would travel hundreds of miles in a day, visiting clients throughout New England to inspect roofs and offer solutions to problems. In 1991, he started his own consulting and construction services company. He sold the business in 2016.
Now splitting time between Massachusetts and Florida, Noblin continues to receive consulting requests, although he keeps his work to a part-time schedule, so he has more time to spend with his family, do home and property maintenance, get out on the golf course, and continue to play baseball in leagues where many of the men are 20 years his junior.
“I still have an energy level that’s off the charts,” Noblin says.