AUSTIN, TX — It takes steel and concrete or base and asphalt to build roads and bridges, but Robert Adamson also emphasized the importance of “conversations and relationships” while addressing colleagues after becoming President for the Associated General Contractors of Texas (AGC of Texas).

The East Texas native will serve a one-year term as President of the association that represents most of the state’s highway and bridge builders.

Adamson is Vice President of Operations for Longview Bridge & Road, a highway construction company that builds and maintains roads and bridges throughout east and northeast Texas. AGC of Texas represents approximately 300 contractors and 500 associate companies, which provide equipment, materials and various services for the highway construction industry.

The industry employees thousands of workers and is responsible for nearly $9 billion of state highway construction and maintenance each year.

“This is an exciting time to be in our industry and a historic time to be part of it in Texas,” Adamson said. “With the overwhelming passage of Prop 1 and Prop 7 just a few years ago, here in 2020 we are entering onto a new decade with a clear message from the people of Texas: ‘Meet the transportation needs of our state.’ And I have no doubt that, along with our partners at TxDOT, the members of the AGC of Texas are ready to not only meet the challenge of this call, but to exceed it.”

That can be accomplished, he said, by using “new and innovative roadway designs and construction methods, modifying and developing more cost effective and efficient equipment, creating safer work environments through design and training and staying in tune and in touch with the political landscape.”

People need roads and bridges to travel in their daily lives. Businesses and commerce depend on the transportation system to move products from factories to the marketplace.

“AGC is about people. It’s about the people who are a part of the organization and being President of AGC is a tremendous honor and responsibility,” Adamson said. “But leading the AGC is not about me. It’s about the celebration of an industry that has continued for so long and provides the opportunity for so many to be productive.”

Adamson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1980 from Trinity University, with a major area of study in construction management focusing on the homebuilding industry, where he learned the basics of estimating costs and bidding on jobs and how to design and plan a construction job.

He has been in the highway construction industry for nearly 40 years, including 22 with Longview Bridge & Road. The last East Texan to lead AGC of Texas was Larry Johnson (2010), Founder of Longview Bridge & Road.

“Larry afforded me a tremendous opportunity to be a part of this statewide industry. Not many people get the opportunity to do that,” Adamson said. “It’s a great privilege.”

Longview Bridge & Road works on road projects north to the Red River along the Oklahoma border, south to Interstate 10, east to the Sabine River along the border with Louisiana and west to Interstate 45. The company employs approximately 300 people.

“We are on the edge of a new era in highway construction in the state of Texas,” he said. “AGC has to maintain the innovation and the dedication that we have exemplified in the last 95 years.”