
05/02/2023

By Ed Brennen
In a classroom with no partitions, puddles on the ground and large machinery roaring in the background, two dozen senior civil engineering majors hear to adjunct faculty member Rex Radloff ’09, ’11 clarify the internal workings of a $381 million construction venture.
The pupils, all donning pearly white challenging hats, are touring what will before long be a new five-story wing of the renovated Lowell Substantial College — a 6-year venture that they’ve studied closely this semester in their Construction Management training course with Radloff, who is overseeing the get the job done as a project government with Suffolk Development.
“A lot of lessons concentrate on a lot more design and theoretical inquiries, but this is additional tangible. He places us on-website so we see firsthand what we’re essentially finding out,” says Noor Hallal, a senior civil engineering main from Philadelphia.
Graphic by Ed Brennen


Rex Radloff has integrated the $381 million Lowell High renovation venture, the major in the condition, into his Development Administration training course.


This is the initial semester that Radloff has taught the study course, which handles anything from task estimating and labor fees to development scheduling and quality management.
Radloff attained a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s in geotechnical engineering at UML, the place he was also a member of the men’s track and subject workforce. A Texas native who now life in Marblehead, Massachusetts, he has been with Suffolk considering that 2018.
“It was neat coming again to Lowell when this job obtained started” in 2020, claims Radloff, who manages extra than a dozen Suffolk employees associates — together with fellow UML alumni Katrina Walther ’11 and Kerry Weldon ’15 — and upwards of 100 building personnel on site. “Once we were settled in, I understood how considerably additional I could get associated by training the program.”
In addition to web site visits with his pupils, Radloff has integrated information and facts on tasks these types of as material procurement and subcontractor hiring into the class. For their final task, students are supplying a value examination of the just lately finished 36,000-square-foot athletic heart, which was the to start with section in the 4-section design venture.
Impression by Ed Brennen


Senior civil engineering major and Lowell Higher alumna Tiffanie Nil, correct, visits the renovation web page with Design Management classmates Lisa Pavan, left, and Lorna Gray.


“I’ve been in a position to use existing, actual-existence examples — not from 30 many years ago that might be outdated,” claims Radloff, who hopes to carry on teaching the system at the very least through the duration of the undertaking, which is scheduled for completion in 2026.
One university student who understands the background of the challenge as well as any individual is Tiffanie Nil, a Lowell native who graduated from the high college in 2019.
“I try to remember there was constantly speak about building a new superior school, but I didn’t hope there to be operate performed for yrs to occur. It is awesome to see that it is already in this stage,” Nil claims right before climbing a temporary stairwell to the metallic roof of a new 3-tale addition that supplies sweeping sights of UML’s East Campus.
Nil, who will start off doing the job for infrastructure style and design organization HNTB immediately after graduating, claims Radloff’s class has served her to better recognize all that goes into a project’s layout system.
Impression by Ed Brennen


Construction Management students check out the 3rd ground of Lowell High’s future freshman academy with adjunct faculty member Rex Radloff.


“This will definitely aid me in my occupation,” suggests Nil, who will operate at HNTB’s Chelmsford, Massachusetts, area and focus on railway design.
For Edgardo Paz, the training course verified his selection to go after a vocation in building management, a industry he discovered about throughout his sophomore calendar year. He not long ago acknowledged a position with Whiting-Turner Contracting and will get started doing work for them in his indigenous Washington, D.C., this summer season.
“I like how construction management is a mix of being in the business office and getting in the subject,” claims Paz, who was a challenge administration intern with Consigli Design last summertime in Washington.
“I loved communicating with laborers and foremen, the majority of whom spoke Spanish. I was ready to enable them with translation to my supervisors,” states Paz, who acquired a whole scholarship to UML as a member of the initially cohort of the DC-CAP Students Application.
Picture by Ed Brennen


A trio of UML alumni – Katrina Walther ’11, Kerry Weldon ’15 and Rex Radloff ’09, ’11 – are functioning on the Lowell Significant challenge for Suffolk Construction.


Checking out the Lowell Substantial construction web site with Radloff’s class has been beneficial, Paz claims, simply because “you get to see some factors in human being that you’ve only viewed just before on drawings, which allows you comprehend it a minor more.”
Radloff, who would like to start providing co-op possibilities to UML students by his operate with Suffolk, is thrilled to see his learners launching their careers.
“It’s a great course,” says Radloff, who is happy he’s had the option to educate them about development administration.
“It’s distinctive from engineering we’re learning strategies, not answers,” he says. “In the development management world, it’s about buying up on tactics to get you through the day or the 7 days. It calls for you to have a particular degree of people capabilities that are not actually taught, which is one thing that a ton of people find eye-catching.”