Page 17: of Marine News Magazine (September 2019)

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INSIGHTS

Also in keeping with the Detyens corporate philosophy of caring for ‘the employee before owner,’ you also share the business rewards with employees, families and the local community. That all sounds good. How does it work in real practice? Give us some real life examples of that policy in play.

The hourly employee bonus pool is based on customer satisfaction and not pro? t. All our employees get their health care coverage for free and we offer an onsite medical facility for the employees and their families free of charge.

There is a small cost for full family health care coverage at a nominal fee, but the medical center visits and the pre- scription medicines are free of charge. We also house and support The Harvest Free Medical Center. Harvest Free is a free medical clinic that supports those less fortunate in pour population that don’t have affordable health care.

Detyens is also involved in ALS research in hope of ? nding a cure for this terrible disease.

You pride yourself on running one of the most suc- cessful ship repair businesses in the U.S., a pri- vately owned operation focused on what it knows best: ship repair. Any thoughts to bidding for new builds in the future? You’ve certainly got the real estate; the lay down space and the equipment. Why or why not? Loy with long time employee ‘Pee Wee’ on his retirement day. 58 Years of Service!

Yes, we have a big facility and back when the Navy oc- cupied the yard, they did build ships here; however, a new

In keeping with the Detyens creed of ‘Customer be- build yard and a repair yard are like night and day. We took fore Company,’ your ? rm strives to deliver on-time, up the position 25 years ago that we were going to become excellent service. A ship in the yard is not making its the best commercial ship repair in the country and we are owner money. You’ve also said that you aren’t look- going to stay the course. ing to make the short term pro? t; you want to make money now, of course, but it is the long term relation- ship that you aspire to. Tell us a bit about how you Last fall, you said that you’d be moving the hull and pipe shop into bigger buildings. The move was said to actually make that happen. be aimed at attracting even larger jobs, and to situ-

All of our employees realize that our customers are the ate the company to grow for another 50 years. How’s most important people at the shipyard. If not for cus- that move going, is it complete and has it yielded the tomers, why would we need employees? The employees premium assignments you’ve envisioned? understand that the ship makes no money for its owner

The move has gone as planned and we are happy with while it is at the yard and we have created a bonus plan the outcome. Everyone always asks, “How are you going that incentivizes the employees to treat the customer to grow, how can you get bigger?” Well, we have four dry- with respect, do a quality job and get the ship out in docks, eight deep water piers, hundreds of thousands of time. Actually, repeat customers normally ask for certain usable square feet of inside workshops and machining cen- workers before they even arrive. Our bonus structure re- ters, but there are only so many hours in a day and days in wards the employees with a percentage of the gross re- a year. Our growth opportunities for the immediate future ceipts of the project whether the company made or lost come with improved ef? ciencies.

money as long as the vessel left on time and the owner was happy. Last year they received over 6 weeks of pay in

What kind of foreign ? ag work do you typically per- their bonus checks.

form? Do these tend to be ‘vessel of opportunity’

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