‘Let’s build something else’: Meet Earl Grady, ESSIE’s unsung hero

In the cavernous metal building that houses the Powell Family Structures & Materials Lab, Earl Grady is, in his own words, building dreams. 

As the lab’s machine shop manager on the University of Florida’s East Campus, Grady is tasked with fabricating, machining and/or welding the structures that underpin complex research projects in ESSIE, the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment. He quietly supports UF’s research mission with grit, sweat and hard-won experience. 

The 4-meter spinning platter underneath the Powell Lab’s federally funded wind tunnel? He built that. The sensor-equipped mast deployed in a storm’s path during hurricane season? He drove it down from Michigan and welded it onto its trailer. The very building where he works? He built that, too.  

After a wildly varied and circuitous career, Grady — with his untamed gray hair and irreverent T-shirts — is perfectly at home working side by side with highly credentialed faculty members on their sometimes abstruse research projects.  

“Somebody’s gotta make it. I gotta build your dream. I gotta build your vision,” he contends. 

In a way, his experiences before joining UF seven years ago prepared him for success in the ESSIE machine shop. 

“A person like me, I’m not necessarily credentialed, but I’ve done some interesting stuff,” he remarked. “I’ve done industrial maintenance and electrical work. I've worked on locomotives. I've been 160 feet in the air in a harness, hanging off a roof, doing repair work.” 

The results of his work are all over the university. 

Grady fabricated the deep-water protective cage for the ocean-floor ModPen project. He built custom aluminum grab screens, gravel panels, instrument mounts and boat gantry beams for ESSIE’s coastal group. He performed certified code welding for research examining light pole performance during hurricanes. He performed the welding for the Sentinel hurricane research towers.  

With ESSIE students, he mentored and taught the Eckhoff Steel Bridge Design Team through multi-year championships and assisted the championship Concrete Canoe Team with form construction.  

“My name's not on any of the stuff, but, you know, I take pride in my work,” Grady said. “Your sweat's in there. There’s a lot of my blood and skin on these things.” 

Grady’s supervisor, Powell Lab Operations Manager Scott Powell, is frequently blown away by Grady’s work.   

“If it can be built out of metal, Earl is the one who makes it happen with a professional result,” Powell said. “His attention to detail ensures nothing misses inspection. He has a rare intuition for working with metal — anticipating warpage before the arc strikes, fabricating custom jigs on the fly and finding a way forward on even the most daunting builds.”

Grady’s work supporting ESSIE’s research mission is not lost on leadership.  

“We pride ourselves on being able to fabricate customized, complex pieces in-house,” said ESSIE Director Kurtis Gurley, Ph.D. "Earl is a critical part of a critical team that generates new discoveries in wind engineering and fluid dynamics." 

Civil and Coastal Engineering Professor of Practice Taylor Rawlinson, Ph.D., P.E., also faculty advisor for the canoe and bridge teams, concurred: “We break it, he fixes it.” 

Grady’s journey to UF was far from linear.

After years as a traveling contract welder, Grady found himself in Newport News, Virginia. He applied for a job building battleships, even shaving off his facial hair and getting a haircut, a requirement due to the breathing equipment.  

Before he could start the position, COVID-19 ended the job as much of the industry shut down. Next was a stint putting labels on soap at a manufacturing facility.  

It was not the job for him.  

A friend in Gainesville alerted Grady to an open position as a welder at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.  

“Scott got where I was coming from,” Grady said of Powell. “I guess my years of experience got me in the door.” 

Grady, the new UF welder, soon found himself working with researchers and academics, many of whom had doctoral degrees.  

Did he know that before taking the job?

“No, I did not,” he answered flatly. “When I first came here, I thought I was just going to be welding. Riiiiiiight. I do way more. I don't get to weld near as much as I would like to.” 

Working in an academic environment was certainly different.

“This isn't manufacturing. I don't have somebody watching me all the time,” he noted. “Everything here is custom, it’s a one-off.” 

Grady's experience brought new possibilities to UF. Staff and faculty colleagues valued his experience and asked for his opinions. They even modified designs per his advice. 

“I’d never had a lot of, ‘What do you think of this?’” he said. “That’s new. I really like that because I’m going to be the only one to build it, right? So it's kind of nice that I get involved in it like that.” 

Grady learned how to weld at age 9, taught by his father. Having mastered welding with a torch and a coat hanger, he moved on to modifying go-carts, going so far as to replace a blown engine with a motorcycle engine and custom welding the cart’s engine mounts.  

“We built all kinds of crazy things,” he recalled. “I had a blast. When you got it working, you’d kind of sit there and go, ‘Oh, yeahhhh.’ But then the next thing would be, ‘Can we build something else? Let's build something else.’” 

That spirit of restless creativity powers Grady today. With his experience and work ethic, he enables impactful engineering projects of the future.  

Asked about his work, Grady is almost philosophical. 

“It's not always rainbows and butterflies,” he said. “But the stuff that we do eventually saves lives. In some shape, form or fashion, it helps mold the next idea that's gonna help, you know? I do dig that.”