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© St. Petersburg Times, published March 3, 2003
New position: Vice president, conceptual design, T.Y. Lin International, Tampa
Previous position: Vice president, conceptual design, URS, Tampa
When Micheal Coleman drives south along Interstate 275 from the Howard Frankland Bridge to the Sunshine Skyway, he's driving on his road. He designed nearly all of it, all the curves and sweeps. He also designed the stretch of I-275 up to the I-4 junction. And he designed the part of the interstate to the I-275/I-75 apex.
Now, as the newly appointed vice president of conceptual design for T.Y. Lin International in Tampa, Coleman will design roadways throughout the Tampa Bay area.
The interstate work was created while Coleman was vice president of conceptual design for 33 years with URS in Tampa. He retired from URS in August, then found himself, at 66, taking on his new position as head of T.Y. Lin's new roadway division.
For years, Coleman's focus was on interstates and on roadway access to airport terminals, designing the roads that take people to curbside. The work took him around the world, and Coleman estimates he accumulated more than 1.5-million frequent flier miles in the process.
Now, he drives.
As an engineer for the past 46 years, Coleman says his approach has been to "do conceptual design. I do all the stuff, (drawing) freehand curves on thin paper using a pencil, whereas the younger engineers are banging it out on CAD computers.
"I just dream up ideas, if you will, and pass (them) on to younger engineers who work up a final plan and show it to the client."
Clients include state, county and municipal road departments who come to T.Y. Lin International for designs to eliminate congestion, accidents, delays and the like, Coleman said. "They ask us to look at it, and we do the concept and estimate the cost."
T.Y. Lin International is a civil and structural engineering company with headquarters in San Francisco and branch offices in Tampa, Fort Myers and Coral Gables.
Coleman's skills as an engineer were learned in various courses, he said. He attended the University of Maryland briefly, but returned to his home in Baltimore where he began working on the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and attending night school.
He studied with the International Correspondence School. "They invite you to get your education off the back of a matchbook," Coleman joked. "It took five years." He passed a 16-hour certification exam and is a registered professional engineer in eight states, he said.
"I was an engineering nut in (high) school," he said. "I loved to build things with my hands. I was always numbers-inclined.
"I love it. I love dealing with people," he said. "I love the challenge of somebody saying, 'Here's a problem. Can you show us a possible way to fix it?' And I show them different alternatives."
Coleman moved to Florida first to work on the design of the interstate through Tampa in 1969.
He noted that the "malfunction junction" bottleneck where I-4 and I-275 converge was in place when he came to the area. But design engineers often get the blame anyway.
"In every city where I've lived and worked, every time I went to a civic function, people would say, 'Oh, you're the guy who's responsible for all that congestion.' I'd say, 'No, I'm the guy who's going to fix it.' "
Coleman stayed in the bay area for seven years, then moved to Atlanta for 17 years. He returned in 1993 and lives in Odessa.
Coleman has been married for 46 years and has four children.
In his spare time, he continues to work with his hands, woodworking at home. He's currently conceptualizing and building a table for his new office at T.Y. Lin.