Fifty years of support and effort have shaped the industry

By Rindi White

he thing about legends is, they don’t go looking for anyone to tell them what a great job they’re doing. They focus on the issues at hand and work toward success.

So it was that Jim Fergusson learned the Alaska Legislature had passed a legislative citation honoring him for his fifty-plus years of supporting and advocating for the Alaska construction industry.

“It was a complete, total surprise,” Fergusson says.

It wasn’t the first time Fergusson was surprised by an honor—he’s also an Associated General Contractors, or AGC, of Alaska Hard Hat recipient. It’s the association’s most prestigious honor, and one traditionally kept on the down low until the dinner dance at the AGC of Alaska Annual Convention in November, when the emcee reads the honoree’s various accomplishments. Fergusson has been involved with AGC since he moved to Alaska with his wife, Marsha, in 1984 to continue his career with Kiewit Construction, in part because the Kiewit was a union contractor and one of AGC’s roles is to collectively bargain with unions so that individual contractors don’t have to each negotiate on their own.

Those were relatively early days for the construction industry in Alaska, and, at the time, construction work wasn’t looked on highly.

“We had a reputation worse than a used car salesman,” Fergusson says.

It’s difficult to attract a workforce to an industry that isn’t well-respected, so Fergusson and other AGC of Alaska members began an effort to turn the image around.

Fergusson, along with former AGC of Alaska Executive Director Dick Cattanach and others involved with AGC at the time, helped create the Construction Industry Progress Fund, or CIPF. It’s structured similarly to other industry support programs, such as the Beef Checkoff, through which cattlemen pay a $1-per-head assessment on marketed animals and the money is used to support marketing and research aimed at increasing demand for beef. Similarly, the CIPF collects a portion of all Davis-Bacon Act wages (for federally funded projects) performed by AGC member companies in the state.

“It allowed us to improve on the image of the construction industry in Alaska,” Fergusson says. “It’s still working today.”

The fund was initially created to attract young people to the construction industry, and in part to counter a prevalent mindset that to succeed after high school, one must attend college. Improving the image of the industry was part of that. While the goals are similar, Fergusson says the money goes to support a range of efforts today, from holding summer workshops for teachers to contributions toward the UA Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge contest teams to helping fund the National Association of Women In Construction.

“I like to think of it as, we put the cherry on top of the sundae. It changes year to year, which is good. If it helps, we’ll do it,” Fergusson says.

Fergusson’s involvement at AGC has been steady since the start. A few years after his arrival, he was asked to head up labor negotiations with AGC. From there, he moved on to the AGC Executive Board, moving through the chairs. AGC recognized his support of the industry in 1996 with the AGC Hard Hat award, and in 1998 he served as AGC Board President. Fergusson is now a life board member, a title one receives after serving on the statewide board of directors for twelve years, and is also a national life governor with AGC of America, a title bestowed after twelve years of service on the national board.

Fergusson says he’s proud of his involvement in the Municipality of Anchorage Title 21 rewrite effort to develop a building code that is clear and works for Anchorage. It took ten years and thousands of man-hours, he says. Following that effort, he was chair of the Anchorage Planning Commission, which he says was a valuable learning experience.

For the last twenty years, Fergusson has presided over AGC board elections, held during the AGC of Alaska Annual Convention. While it might seem like an innocuous task, there were years when elections were a spicy affair: rules were unclear and it seemed everyone thought their opinion of the right way to do things was correct. The Saturday election might take hours, making people late for the dinner/dance.

Fergusson says he took it upon himself to write a procedure to formalize how elections took place.

“It was not an easy task,” he notes. “Everyone thought their way of doing it was the only one.”

Eventually, the process got worked out and the elections are now handled with little fuss. Last year, Fergusson stepped away from his duties as an election official.

“I’m 76 years old; it’s time for younger people to take over,” he says. “We’ve got good leadership in place. It looked like a good time to walk out the door.”

Fergusson says he has retired from his consulting business, which he began in 1996, and is enjoying his retirement, which keeps him busier than ever.