Page 15: of Marine News Magazine (May 2025)

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Q&A

Manson, I didn’t want to be perceived as dead weight. So,

I ended up going back to school, earning my MBA while working, and then once I went to the dark side – to the left side of the brain – and the rest is history. Today, Manson is a $500 million revenue company and, in 2012, we became a 100% S Corporation ESOP so we are employee-owned.

Our salaried employees own Manson, and I’m proud to say that our value has increased almost six times since 2012, so it’s been a fabulous part of our retirement program.

Can you give a by the numbers looking at the company, something that gives a size and shape to the company, it’s maritime and dredg- ing operations ? eet and capabilities.

99% of our work over our time has been US based. We are a Jones Act company, all of our equipment is US- built, US-? agged, US-crewed, built in US shipyards, so that mainly is why we stick to the US market. We are roughly 50% heavy civil marine construction, that’s bridges, wharves, piers for the Navy, offshore work in the oil patch removing platforms and jackets and then 50% of our business is dredging, and that’s the three food groups of dredging, that’s cutter section dredging, clam- shell dredging and hopper dredging.

Image courtesy Manson Construction

Our headquarters is in Seattle with of? ces in Richmond,

California; Long Beach, California; Houma, Louisiana; and

Jacksonville, Florida. We perform most of our work on the

Fred, can you give us a quick overview of Man-

Paci? c, the Atlantic and the Gulf Coast. We have worked in- son Construction, with insights on your career ternationally, in Mexico, in the Caribbean, and in Canada. path in dredging. Did you always know that

Canada has its own marine cabotage laws so, when we’ve yours would be a maritime career?

Manson was started in 1905 by my great-grandfather worked in Canada, it’s either have to have been a unique

Peter Manson and as the lore goes, my grandmother held circumstance to get permission to work there which would the lantern as he dug up a jar of gold coins which was be akin to a Jones Act waiver in the United States. in the ground because they didn’t trust banks. They took those gold coins and they purchased a winch and that When you look at the dredging market in gen- winch then was put on a barge and that became Manson’s eral, what are the drivers and how’s business ? rst pile driver. Slightly after 1905, which would be 1992, look for you in the coming ? ve years?

We are in the salad days, as they’d say, of funding for US

I came to Manson and, at the time, Manson was a $50 mil- lion revenue company. I started on the bottom rung and Army Corps of Engineers work with the Harbor Mainte- nance Trust Fund, percentage of those funds having in-

I did everything from bank reconciliations to administra- tive functions and worked my way up over the years, I got creased over the years, the Army Corps has been able to get more projects done on their list. involved in dredging in the mid-’90s.

There’s been a huge buildup of equipment in the US

Before I was at Manson, I was an English major with a writing emphasis, I had a couple poems published; not dredging market and Manson has been part of that. We’re your typical marine background! But when I came into building a 15,000 cubic yard hopper dredge, and once www.marinelink.com MN 15|