Lifetime Masonry Achievement

The Rocky Mountain Masonry Institute honored Dan Berich, founder of Berich Masonry Inc, with a Lifetime Achievement Award Oct. 3 during the McGraw-Hill Gold Hardhat Awards.
Berich is only the second person to ever receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from RMMI.
Berich began his masonry career during World War II. While he was a student at Denver’s South High School in 1943, his uncle Walt Oberg taught him bricklaying. Berich stuck with the career and built small residential projects during the 1950s. In the 1960s he switched from small residential to constructing load-bearing masonry apartment buildings.
Berich formalized his business as “Dan Berich, Inc” in 1971. The firm worked with some of the state’s biggest GC’s on high profile and private projects. Berich built 30 or 40 load-bearing masonry apartment buildings in Denver and Colorado Springs, including the 1,000-unit Speer Center apartments at 10th and Speer. Berich also built some of the area’s biggest retail projects, at least 40 King Soopers stores, the Focus on the Family headquarters, the Arapahoe County Youth Detention Center, Red Rocks Community College and the Aurora Criminal Justice Center.
Berich also helped form the Colorado Masonry Contractors Association, which became the Rocky Mountain Masonry Institute in 1988, and served as its president in the 1960s.