April 5, 2019

Allan Osberg dies at 94

Osberg

Longtime local contractor Allan Osberg died March 15 at the age of 94, according to the Associated General Contractors of Washington.

Osberg was president of Osberg Construction, a heavy-highway contractor started by his father, Axel. That firm built many projects in Alaska under a joint venture with Manson Construction, including the Yukon River Bridge in the mid-1970s. It also built local projects, such as straightening the Sammamish River between Lake Sammamish and Lake Washington in 1963.

Osberg graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in civil engineering in 1945, and then went to Harvard University, where earned a master's degree in civil engineering with a specialty in soil mechanics. After college, he joined his father's company, eventually becoming president in 1966.

Osberg phased out the company's construction operations in the late 1980s to make it a development company.

In a 1998 interview, Osberg told the DJC that the thing he liked best about construction was the variety each day brought, including travel and meeting people.

“It's been fascinating,” he said.

Osberg said the 1950s and 1960s fascinated him the most because problems were settled on the job. In the 1998 interview, he said the industry spends too much time on attorneys and accountants instead of on engineers, which has created an adversarial work environment.

“(In the past) you could buy a drink for the engineer and not be accused of trying to bribe him,” he said.

Osberg was president of the AGC Mountain Pacific Chapter in 1965, and in 1974 he became the first president of the AGC of Washington — a merger of the Seattle-Northwest and Mountain Pacific chapters. In 1970, he was named Contractor of the Year for the Mountain Pacific Chapter and in 2007 was given the AGC Lifetime Achievement Award.

Osberg also served on the AGC Education Foundation board for many years, was its president in 1994, and won the 2010 Distinguished Service Award for his contribution to the foundation and his role in educating the future construction workforce.

In 1998, he was inducted into the UW's Construction Hall of Fame.

There has been no announcement of a memorial.