The Alaska Contractor - Summer 2008

subcontract you need on your job,” she
said. “As the project goes on, you don’t
have all your pre-stuff you’ve got to
do, so it’s just basically follow-up. Bit
by bit, it gets more where you’re out in
the field and you get to do more out in
the field. Plus, there’s more out in the
field that you’ve got to keep track of.”
Warren said the skills she acquired in
the classroom now help her considerably
when she is faced with paperwork on the
job. She is able to develop spreadsheets
for quantity calculations and other tasks,
which enables her to streamline her paper
workload considerably.
“Once you develop it, you have it,”
she said, “and you don’t have to do it
again. You just enter in your numbers
and the spreadsheet does it for you.
That makes it kind of nice, to be able
to develop that stuff to help you out.”
Warren said the CM courses offered
her tutelage in basic, general project
management. She took courses that
covered such topics as soils, cost estimating,
civil and architectural drafting,
construction law, financial management
and statics.
Courses in the CM curriculum are
closely tied to the industry that needs
and supports it, Callahan has said. The
curriculum was designed in accordance
with requirements of the American
Council for Construction Education,
according to UAA’s CM Web site.
Callahan and other architectural and
engineering technology faculty at UAA
first discussed the possibility of forming
a CM program in 2001, but a needsassessment
survey done the following
year by UAA’s David E. Gunderson, Dr.
Jang W. Ra, Dr. Herb Schroeder and H.R.
Holland accelerated their efforts, sparking
conversations between industry and
academia representatives and bringing
forth Alaska’s first CM program.
The survey stated that while Alaska’s
construction industry contributes
7.5 percent of a $24.4-billion gross state
product, and is expected to experience
a 27-percent increase in employment
from 2005 to 2045, the closest postsecondary
construction education program
was situated 2,435 miles away, at
the University of Washington. Alaska
was one of seven states – Delaware,
Hawaii, New Hampshire, Vermont,
West Virginia and Wyoming – without
a CM program. The other states (with
the exception of Hawaii) were located
within 260 miles of a university with a
CM program, however.
“The purpose of this research effort
was to investigate the perceived
needs of Alaskan contractors in hiring
entry level construction management
personnel,” according to the survey.
Ninety-nine people in the construction
industry – most of them general contractors
– returned their surveys, which
indicated the need for approximately 31
CM graduates annually. Respondents
said they would be willing to pay an average
starting annual salary of $39,004
to someone with little or no experience,
but an average starting salary of $42,233
to a CM graduate with six months of
internship work experience.
“The required skills identified in the
survey will be used as a basis to develop
a new construction management program
curriculum specific to the unique
Alaskan environment,” wrote the survey
authors. “These findings correlate
well with existing research that predicts
the supply and demand for construction
education graduates nationwide
and indicate the need for a Construction
Management Bachelor of Science
degree program in Alaska.”
Salary levels for construction managers
in this state have risen considerably.
The annual mean wage for the
880 construction managers employed
in Alaska in May 2007 was $96,790,
according to figures compiled that
month by the U.S. Department of Labor’s
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those
figures did not include information
about the number of years of collegelevel
coursework those construction
managers had completed.
The top-paying state, according to
those statistics, was New York, with
an annual mean wage of $122,580 for
construction managers.
Callahan was teaching in a two-year
AET program back when the Gunderson
needs assessment survey emerged.
When they started to look at the
development of CM curriculum, half
of the courses were already ready
– building codes and standards, methods
of building construction. Callahan
and his colleague then developed civil
and building cost estimating, scheduling,
construction safety and construction
project management courses.
“We essentially leveraged existing
courses and added new courses
essentially dealing with CM subjects
and were able to create a viable twoyear
degree program,” Callahan said
in a 2007 Contractor interview. “We
always had in mind a four-year degree
was going to come behind it in
a short period of time. We knew the
associate degree that was in place
was designed as the first two years of
a four-year degree. It’s rare in higher
education to have that kind of design
to that program.”
Warren said many of her instructors
brought with them a background
in construction.
“Some of them have been out of
the construction industry, as far as
working in it, for a number of years,”
Warren said. “But in my equipment
course, they brought in someone from
the field to teach us what he’s doing
right now. He told us, ‘This is what I do
on my job, how I keep track of equipment,
costs.’ He showed us spreadsheets
that he uses. It was more reallife,
up-to-date type stuff, which was
very helpful.”
Warren said the courses she took
as part of the CM bachelor’s program
hadn’t been taught before at UAA.