Vigor's Alaska shipyard activities grow: company develops workforce and infrastructure.

• Author: White, Rindi
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Transportation

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An ongoing public-private partnership between Vigor Industrial and the state of Alaska is paying off in jobs, long-term contracts, and development at the Ketchikan and Seward marinas.

Vigor Alaska, a division of Pacific Northwest ship building and repair company Vigor Industrial, purchased Ketchikan-based Alaska Ship and Drydock in 2012. It also bought Seward Ship's Drydock in 2014. Both sites are growing and thriving, says Vigor Alaska Director of Shipyard Development Doug Ward.

"We've become an economic development project," Ward says, referring to the partnership between Alaska Ship and Drydock in Ketchikan that formed after the collapse of the timber industry in Southeast in the 1990s. Ward has been with the company since 1994 and has seen it grow from 35 employees to nearly 250 people today, between the Ketchikan and Seward shipyards.

Vigor Alaska services a broad range of clients, from cruise ships to Crowley Marine tugboats that shepherd oil tankers in and out of Prince William Sound to fishing vessels working all over the state. The state of Alaska's Alaska Marine Highway System is the company's largest volume customer. The company has a contract to perform all routine maintenance and repairs necessary to keep the Alaska Marine Highway System ferries running according to US Coast Guard specifications.

In April, Vigor employees were hard at work making repairs to the M/V Tustumena, a ferry that serves Alaska communities from Homer to Kodiak and out to Dutch Harbor.

"It's the only vessel that serves the [Aleutian] chain," says Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities' Spokesman Jeremy Woodrow.

The Tustumena ended service for its annual overhaul on March 10 and was expected to be back in service by May 15, but workers found the metal decking in the car deck area of the fifty-two-year-old vessel was corroded. Like rotten wood on an outdoor deck, Woodrow says the corroded metal had to be cut out and replaced to ensure it was strong enough to safely carry vehicles.

The additional work was expected to be complete May 27, Woodrow says. Ward says the job is a top priority for their crew.

"For any of our customers, and the Marine Highway System in particular, whenever there is mission-critical work that is preventing one of our customers from completing its mission ... We pull out all the stops and try to get it back to work as quickly as possible," Ward says.

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