Page 37: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 2002)

Boatbuilding Yearbook j by Regina P. Ciardiello

SENESCO

In the fall of 1990, the Berlin Wall came clown, thus unifying Germany into one nation — and marking the end of the Cold War. One year following the fall of the

Iron Curtain, U.S. President George Bush and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev signed the START treaty, which stated that both nations would agree to disman- tle all nuclear weapons. How do these events halfway around the world effect U.S. builders of boats and barges? Significantly, as it turns out. It appears that the fall in nuclear submarine production has given rise to one of the country's fast growing barge building companies.

By Regina P. Ciardiello, senior editor

The middle to late 1980s was a watershed of sorts for the U.S. shipbuilding industry. With the end of the

Cold War came the end of the 600-ship navy dream, and a significant and prolonged reduction of naval shipbuilding in the U.S. While many of the major U.S. shipbuilding facilities have been absorbed via a mas- sive corporate consolidation, the mothballing of facili- ties and loss of jobs was unavoidable.

Many yards, namely General Dynamics-Electric

Boat and Northrop Grumman's Newport News Ship- building facility — two major builders of nuclear sub- marines (and major competitors as well) were forced to lay off long-time employees. General Dynamics-Elec- tric Boat, had only recently spent for the installation of new lighting, and panel line assembly equipment, upgrading its production capacity, but with nothing to construct. With the closure of the first building in 1992,

Electric Boat wrapped up operations on the second building in 1998 — exactly one year before the birth of

SENESCO. 1994 —A Turning Point

Before thoughts of SENESCO even popped into the heads of anyone in the Southeastern New England area, a meeting was held at the end of 1993. to decide what would be done with the 25 acres of land that Elec- tric Boat had abandoned — and to effectively deter- mine the future for thousands of displaced workers in not only Rhode Island, but for the entire Southeastern

New England area as well. What once was a bevy of production activity on Narragansett Bay had become two empty buildings situated on 25 acres of land on the former Quonset Point Naval Air Base. The buildings, which were used as seaplane hangars during WWII were simply taking up space and rusting away. There- fore a subcommittee called "Navigating Beyond 1994" was established. According to Dick Carpenter,

SENESCO's senior vice president, the purpose of the meeting was to involve as many residents from the

Southeastern New England area on this decision.

Carpenter, who is an attorney specializing in Admi- ralty Law, heard about this subcommittee through a client who was involved. By this point, the committee had decided that a solution would be to establish anoth- er shipyard at Quonset Point, but alas they needed legal assistance. Enter Carpenter, who at the urging of his client, and through his own interest, offered his ser- vices as' general counsel and eventually evolved into the position of the yard's president in 1996 — a posi- tion that would later be assumed by Bob Homan once the yard was fully established in 1999.

As president of SENESCO. Carpenter spent the next couple of years not only trying to raise capital for the yard, but to also find a name that would signify some- thing that would identify it as "the people's shipyard." hence the name Southeastern New England Shipyard, which is representative of those who worked together to enhance the family atmosphere that the yard prides itself on. According to Carpenter, the majority of the yard's employees (some of whom were with Electric

Boat) hail from the Southeastern New England area — specifically south of Boston — in Rhode Island. Con- necticut and Maine. "The idea was to include the area's affinity within the yard, so we stuck with it (the

Dick Carpenter, SENESCO's senior vice president. name)," Carpenter said.

The next step was to secure capital for SENESCO, which appeared through financial offerings from a

Providence businessman, Malcolm Chase, and through a $4.75 million, 15-year loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) through its Rural Business Enterprise Grant Program.

With funding in place, all that was left to square away was the site in which the new shipyard would lie, which came in the form of a lease from the Rhode

Island Economic Development Corporation. It was decided that SENESCO would establish its roots on the former Naval Air Base at Quonset Point, taking over the two buildings that Electric Boat had abandoned years before. While not much had to be accomplished in the form of adding basic components to the build- ings, SENESCO wanted to optimize advanced in automation with the implementation of a large Ogden

Panneline, which provides automated assembly and welding of flat panels — cutting manpower by approx- imately 40 percent. The company also boasts a 600-ton bending brake and totally automatic electric arc weld- ing systems. According to Carpenter, this equipment is undoubtedly the company's stronghold in the industry. "It (the new equipment) enables us to build custom products on a wide scale, eliminate human error and provides a lot of platform when erecting modules,"

Carpenter said. "We build things accurately and fast with very little corrective work."

Building the Business

This past summer, after two years of literally estab- lishing itself from the ground up, SENESCO won a contract for a 320-ft. (97.5-m), double hull. 80,000 bar- 34 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News