Underground Construction - February 2019 - 22

C O N V E N T I O N

P R E V I E W

DCA President Jay Osborn Sees
Opportunities for Industry Newcomers

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By the time Jay Osborn was
attending high school in Dodge
Center, Minn., there was never
any question about the career
that lay ahead. His father worked
in the underground construction
industry, and Jay leaped at the
chance to work summers with
him until finishing high school
and getting his first full-time job
at the same distribution contractor in 1978.
With enthusiasm for the work
and determination to learn the
"family business" from his father
and other experienced crew, Osborn rose through the ranks as
a fuser, operator and foreman
at Donaldson Construction, to
supervisor and general manager
at Mueller Pipeline. He joinedQ3
Contracting in 1999 and remained president after its acquisition by Primoris Services in
2012. He has served as president
of Distribution and Transmission
for Primoris since January 2015.
The experience Osborn gained
along his path from the field
to the executive suite has lent
valuable perspective to his term
as president of the Distribution
Contractors Association (DCA),
which is redoubling efforts to
attract young talent to the industry. Underground Construction
met with Osborn near the end of
his term to discuss his career success, his longtime involvement in
DCA and his outlook for the contracting industry through 2019
and beyond.
You decided at an early age to
carry on a family tradition by
making a career in the contracting business. What kind of
work were you doing, and why

22

FEBRUARY 2019 | UConOnline.com

did you want to stick with it?
My dad was in the industry all
his life, and I think part of what
I liked at first was just being
able to go to work with him in
the summers when I was out of
school - going and hanging out
with him. I always had a passion
for the equipment and loved the
construction industry and distribution business my father was in.
I started my career at Donaldson Construction in the small
community where I grew up,
but most of our work was on
distribution projects in the Quad
Cities. We had a mixture of plastic and steel pipe going in when
I started back in the late '70s.
There was a lot of steel in the distribution replacement when I got
involved, but plastics were coming on more and more.
As you started work with your
father, would you say that mentoring played an important role
in your career?
I definitely benefited from the
experience and knowledge that
other people shared with me
throughout my career - and really even before it started, because
my father had me riding equipment at a young age on our farm
in Dodge Center. I always looked
up to him, so I learned a lot more
about the construction side early
on just because I was able to work
and hang out together and talk
with him. Once I started getting
into management, I learned a lot
from Dennis Mueller at MRM
(Mueller Pipeliners). I worked for
Dennis from 1987 to 1999, and
he taught me a lot about running
a business, how to manage the
financial side of it - things like

that. I consider him a mentor,
and we still talk a lot.
What got you get interested in
DCA, and how has it contributed to your success?
Well, I guess we can turn back
to my father again, because he
used to attend DCA conferences,
and that's how I became aware
of it. Once I got into the business
and then the management side,
I started attending all the conferences and quarterly meetings.
Eventually, I got on a few of the
committees. Safety/Risk was the
first one, then the Labor Committee, and finally Government
Relations. I chaired the Government Relations Committee for a
couple of years at the inception
to get it up and running.
That committee had actually
been in place long before then,
but it had just sort of died from
lack of interest. This was about
the time that (DCA executive vice
president) Dennis Kennedy was
stepping down and Rob Darden
was starting. There were some
new tax laws and compliance
changes coming, and Rob felt it
was important to get the Government Relations Committee going
again, so I took on that role to
help get it started.
You've witnessed a lot of changes in the industry through the
years. Looking back, do any of
them stand out?
Some of the most obvious
changes have been the technological advances in materials and
equipment. I had already been
working in the business about 15
years before I got access to my
first directional drills in 1992.

Jay Osborn

We were moving from open cut
methods and, as I mentioned, to
more plastic instead of steel in
distribution replacement. But a
lot of the change that continues
to this day is the increase in rules
and regulations, and a lot of this
has been driven by incidents that
have occurred.
Whenever old infrastructure
fails and causes damage, there
always seems to be a new rule
that comes behind it. That really
came into play after the San Bruno explosion, when they found
the records weren't accurate. Utilities are focusing more heavily on
compliance, looking at records
and systems, and working to
manage these processes. There's
definitely more scrutiny that
affects how we operate as distribution contractors to support our
customers.
There are other issues facing
the industry that are still evolving as we work to address them.
OQ portability is one of them,
and the labor shortage has been
another area of major focus for
DCA.
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