MEMBER PROFILE Manny Fine: A Straight Shot to the Top The former executive director of DFI has led a charmed life. He was blessed with formidable talent and brains, his school grades were all “honors” level, and his career was a series of promotions and accomplishments. Fine did have a family tradition within the construction industry. In fact, he says he comes from three generations of bricklayers. His family did have a relative in the industry in New Jersey, and the Fine family moved there briefly, from Canada, until the U.S. depression made it impos- sible to sell the homes they had under construction. One-year-old Manuel then moved with his family back to Canada. He attained dual citizenship until he relin- quished the American status and became Canadian. Somewhere during his early life, a civil engineer friend of his father took an interest in the young boy and encouraged him to follow the same profession. The young Fine’s stellar academic record had one exception: he failed his French classes. He had to repeat a year of high school to graduate, but even this turned out to his benefit. Already thinking about training to become an engineer, he filled his curriculum with courses in technical subjects relevant to studies for his chosen profession. Fine was in school during World II, when all male high school students in Canada were designated as “cadets.” He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, becoming the commanding officer of the 2,000 students at Central Technical School, a forecast of his future leadership skills. With his extra mandatory year for having failed French, he fulfilled the requirement of senior matriculation, necessary for university admission. At the University of Toronto, he passed each year with honors. His summers, while at university, were spent as an officer cadet in the Canadian Off icers Training Corps (COTC) , AUTHOR Virginia Fairweather DEEP FOUNDATIONS • NOV/DEC 2017 • 71 qualifying as a lieutenant in the Canadian Army Supplementary Reserve. Working as an Engineer Fine’s first job, in 1952, was for Public Works of Canada (PWC), where he continued to excel. The engineers were placed in four ranks. He achieved the highest rank in an “unheard of” short time. In fact, PWC created a new “fifth” rank by moving work proj e c t s to Fine ’s geographical district. Next, he entered private sector construction, enticed by a job offer from Russell Construction, a Toronto-based subsidiary of Balfour Beatty, a U.K. firm, which included a 20 percent pay increase and various roles in engineering, estimating and managing work. He worked five years for this firm bidding work and overseeing bridge construction, marine work and dredging for the firm’s heavy construction division. When the parent company decided to close down the Canadian subsidiary, Fine joined the international division of McNamara Corporation, headquartered in Toronto. He worked in various capacities, eventually becoming assistant chief engineer. He enjoyed working in other countries, and often he oversaw five or six separate projects simultaneously, mainly in Latin and South America, and traveling constantly. Fine proved very valuable to his employer, so much so that the company paid for Fine’s wife, Ruth, to travel with him, at times, to project sites. The couple had three young children at the time, which complicated family life and their schooling. During 1966 to 1968, Fine became the onsite project manager of the New Second Lock project being built by McNamara in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and then returned to a head office position in the heavy construction division upon completion of the job. Then, things changed for the worse. Fine recalls vividly the day, in February 1972, when he participated in a “Saint Valentine Day’s Massacre.” The event Fine alluded to was when the entire McNamara staff was assembled in the firm’s main boardroom, and then told that “almost all of them” would lose their jobs that day during a dismantling of the company. In retrospect, Fine thinks his employer had tried to grow too fast. He survived that mass firing and actually helped with the company reorganization, taking over projects previously assigned to others. Very soon afterwards, Fine ran into Bill Bermingham, a fellow COTC officer cadet from his days at the Royal Canadian School for Military Engineering, who told Fine he was “the type who always landed on his feet.” The next day, Bermingham offered him a job at the Bermingham Group of Companies. He remained at his old friend’s company for 23 years, becoming vice president of the construction com-pany and president of the pi le driving equipment manufacturing company. He sums up his skills, saying his bailiwick was scheduling, bidding and seeing jobs to completion, which he continued to do throughout his career.
