Putnam: No. 2 in longevity, state engineer retires after 51.5 years
Singh said he earned $7,000 a year as a young highway engineer.
LANSING – As a kid growing up in India in the 1940s, Balaram K. “B.K.” Singh liked to build a wall from bricks, knock it down and build it again.
His passion for building led him to a long – very long – engineering career at the Michigan Department of Transportation. Singh, 76, is retiring this month after 51.5 years.
Only one worker, still employed, has worked longer, said Kurt Weiss, spokesman for the Michigan Civil Service Commission.
The longevity record is held by Carroll Little, who works as an administrative law examiner for the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs in Detroit. He’s worked in unemployment compensation since 1956, or more than 60 years.
“Tell that person (Singh) if he waits a little while, he may be able to catch me,” Little chuckled, but added that he has no plans to retire.
Weiss said Little’s employment is the longest in state history as far as staff can determine. And Singh’s 51-plus years is rare, but a small number do reach the half-century mark each year. One Michigan Department of Education employee celebrated 53 years employment in 2005.
“…it certainly puts Mr. Singh in a category that not many employees reach,” Weiss said.
Singh was one of five children growing up in Chennai, India, then called Madras, a big city in southern India. His father worked in government in liquor control.
He came to Michigan in 1964 after earning his civil engineering degree from the College of Engineering Guindy. At the time, the college had a relationship as sister schools with Michigan State University. Singh met MSU professors who were teaching there, including John Singleton, who later became director of MSU’s placement services.
Singh came to East Lansing to earn his master’s in civil engineering in 1964. By the time he finished in 1966, he was already employed by the state in bridge design. His first day was June 21, 1965.
Since then, he’s logged more than 107,000 hours at his state job.
When Singh first went to work for the state, the Vietnam War and protests were raging. President Johnson signed a law banning the burning of draft cards that year. And Rolling Stones got its first hit single “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
A former president of American Motors Corp., George Romney, was Michigan governor.
A few other things have changed over time:
- State employment in 1965 stood at 36,000. Today, there are 49,000 state workers.
- A highway engineer then earned $4.45 to $5.52 per hour; today it is $25.82 to $36.56 per hour.
- Singh said he earned $7,000 a year as a young highway engineer; he now earns $80,000 as a special structures engineer – drainage.
When Singh joined MDOT in 1965, his office was located in the old Motor Wheel factory on Saginaw at Larch. Three years later, the department moved into the Murray Van Wagoner Building, named after a former governor, just west of the Capitol, where transportation is still housed.
Singh said he has enjoyed his career, particularly the research he was able to do on testing materials as part of American Society for Testing and Materials, an international nonprofit organization that sets standards for a range of consumer products. Singh has led efforts on concrete drainage structures, among other materials.
The group this month honored him with the Frank J. Heger Memorial Award, named after an engineer who created the geodesic dome at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida.
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Singh said his bosses supported his participation in the international efforts. He said he turned down more lucrative offers.
“I’m happy. Money is not the prime objective,” he said. “I could have gone to a lot of different places.”
Among the state projects Singh worked on over the years, one stands out: It's the egg-shaped pedestrian tunnel under U.S.-127 in Clare. The 174-foot-long tunnel, dedicated in 2008, is part of the Pere Marquette Rail-Trail. Singh came up with the idea of using corrugated galvanized steel panels at half the cost of a concrete tunnel, according to a MDOT publication.
He also worked on the combined sewer overflow project in East Lansing in 1996 and the I-696 storm tunnel project near Detroit in the 1980s. That project involved drainage pipes as large as 8 feet in diameter buried under submerged freeways.
His research on three-sided structures was employed in 2004 for a viaduct tunnel at the Michigan International Speedway.
Though he could have retired 10 or even 20 years ago, Singh said he didn’t because he enjoyed his work. He’s finally retiring at the nudging of his wife of 49 years, Swayam, who owned Unique Foods of India and Healthy Foods of India in Lansing near Frandor and downtown East Lansing from 1984 to 1996. The Haslett couple, who became U.S. citizens in 1984, have two grown children and three grandchildren, all in Michigan.
“Research comes second. Family comes first,” he said.
He hopes to continue his ASTM standards work, do a little more travel, and spend time with this wife. He also walks every day.
After a half-century of full-time work, he admits: “I will be a fish out of water for some time until I find something to do.”
Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Write to her at 300 S. Washington Square Suite #300 Lansing, MI, 48933. Follow her on Twitter @JudyPutnam.