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Life is about to come full circle for Northwest College of Construction President Dan Graham.

After becoming an apprentice boat builder for a marine construction company in 1978, Graham several years later left for the public sector and eventually helped found the NWCOC. On June 30, he will retire and begin renovating an old, 37-foot Valiant sailboat that he plans to sail south.

“I’m twisting my wife’s arm,” Graham, 63, said. “We can sail off to some place warm hopefully.”

Industry leaders are lamenting the loss of Graham, who they say kept the NWCOC afloat during tough economic times. He was an innovator, they say, who formed key strategic alliances so that expanded course offerings included management training.

“Dan has been totally devoted to making this happen,” said Jeanne Staton, president of Eugene-based Staton Cos., and chairwoman of the college’s board of directors. “He had the vision to create the college for open-shop training, and he pushed and prodded in his quiet way to make it happen.”

After three years in an apprenticeship for Star Fish Marine Construction, Graham left to attend a seminary in Pasadena, Calif. He earned a master’s in theology, but in 1984 decided to go back to building boats.

“I’ve been stuck on it ever since,” he said.

Graham returned to Star Fish, but the company went bankrupt six months later. He spent some time in positions for Mount Hood Community College and multiple state agencies, but in 1994 ended up as director of apprenticeship programs for Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter.

“The rest was history,” Graham said. “The fact that I knew a little about construction probably got me that job. It was not my degree in theology.”

At the height of the boom, like today, construction industry leaders faced a skilled labor shortage and a lack of apprenticeship programs for nonunion, open-shop tradesmen, who comprised 80 percent of the industry.

Graham in 2005 helped found the NWCOC. Four key trade groups – AGC, Associated Builders and Contractors, the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland and the Northwest Utility Contractors Association – supported his efforts and bought the land, leasing it out to the college.

“To my knowledge, there is no other private, nonprofit corporation started by the industry like ours,” he said. “We’re way different from community colleges where kids show up and don’t know what they want to do. We do one thing and that’s construction.”

However, by 2008, the economy was showing signs of collapse. Graham initiated payroll and benefit cuts as well as furloughs for managers. He began “watching expenses like a hawk,” he said.

Graham’s staff backed him up during a five-year period of cutbacks, said Melinda Dailey, the NUCA’s executive director.

“The thing that’s impressed me so much is that he started at probably the worst time in the construction industry, and he would sacrifice so much,” she said. “It was pretty touch and go, but Dan was able to keep it afloat.”

He also began to form a clearer vision for the college so that when the industry rebounded, it would move beyond apprenticeship programs to an expanded array of management-level training. The college offers courses in technology, safety and skills required to be a successful front-line manager, Graham said.

The stronger management programs provide a more sustainable, long-term revenue source than apprenticeship programs driven by student demand.

The NWCOC’s partnerships with trade groups have helped build a skilled workforce across different sectors, said Dave Nielsen, executive director of the Home Builders Association. He credited Graham with strengthening apprenticeship programs, and making connections across political spectrums.

“The residential side has always been struggling to get training for its workers,” Nielsen said. “One of the last things he did was to develop a residential carpentry program that will start this fall.”

The college also has begun to push into new markets, offering front-line, supervisory courses in Spokane, Wash. and Boise, Idaho. Scholarships now are offered to minority contractors and to kids for participation in hands-on summer camps that introduce them to construction.

“We go through doors that open for us,” Graham said.

The college’s new president, David Zagorodney, started May 19. Graham is working with him through June 30, and then will remain a consultant for at least six months to ease the transition, Nielsen said. Zagorodney served in the U.S. Navy for 21 years and has taught technology and finance at Heald College‘s Portland campus.