Posted on October 16, 2024
WEDA eastern chapter president Steve Miller (Ellicott Dredges) opened the proceedings for the Eastern Chapter meeting at the MITAG Maritime conference center at BWI airport in Baltimore. Over 175 attendees participated with a packed agenda, dynamic speakers, and a hall full of exhibitors.
The general program started with an icebreaker on Tuesday evening, followed by a full session yesterday.
WEDA’s new Executive Director, Jessica Bridges, addressed the crowd with praise for WEDA. Bridges joined WEDA earlier this year after a 30 year career in association management.
She said “I am extremely impressed with the level of effort by member companies and individuals volunteering for WEDA; their involvement is amazing.”
She went on to describe plans for the WODCON meeting next year in San Diego, June 23-27, where WEDA is the host. The theme will be “Dredging toward sustainability,” with CEOs of major member companies doing a panel on sustainability on the first day. Subsequent days will focus on offshore wind, energy, and environmental and safety issues.
Bridges expects 1200 attendees with 1/3 of the booths sold already. The window for submitting papers to be presented opens November 1 for 96 slots.
The conference will conclude with a gala dinner at the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum.
In conversation with DredgeWire, Bridges noted that one of her new focus goals for WEDA will be an expansion of education, including full-time staffing in that space. She also described the progress she and her team have made updating WEDA’s website and digital platforms.
Jonathan Daniels, the new-in-2024 Executive Director at the Md Port Administration gave a lively presentation about the growth of the port, dealing with the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and the essential partnership the Port has with the dredging community.
“Dredging makes it possible for Port of Baltimore to do business with 16,000 TEU vessels. We have to dredge 5mmyd.³ of material annually, just for maintenance.” Daniels noted that “that is enough mud to fill the Baltimore Ravens football stadium (75,000 person capacity) two times over.”
But he concluded by adding that a commitment to environmental concerns is also served by the port’s dredging activities; “we have created 970 acres of wetlands so far, with another 2400 planned in coming years.”
An interesting factoid is that the Port calculates each of the 100 cruise ships that visits Baltimore annually generates $1 million for the local economy.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock excels at safety
David Johansson, SVP at Great Lakes Dredge & Dock, fascinated the audience with insights on how GLDD looks at safety and how they have improved their performance consistently in recent years.
GLDD invested $30mm in two multi cats (built by Conrad Shipyard) to improve safety and efficiency for pipeline and ball joints installation and maintenance. Their large flat deck surface areas allow for better equipment handling.
Johanson provided interesting data and ways to think about safety metrics.
Since 2018, GLDD has had a “total recordable injury rate” (TRIR) under 1.0. That means less than one reportable injury per hundred employees per year. DredgeWire notes that the US average is about 2.7 showing the extent to which GLDD excels. Johanson said “that’s a metric everyone should strive for (<1.0) and we’ve done it every year since 2018.”
But Johansson noted that it is important to be not just reactive but proactive, and that TRIR and OSHA data are backward looking. So he emphasized how proud he was that GLDD has created a culture facilitating forward-looking preemptive safety behaviors. For example, he said that “Near misses and corrections, which he described as “good catches” eliminating future risks, submitted by employees, now average over 250 per month.”
The USACE, represented by Erica Janocha, gave a fact-filled, chart-filled presentation about Corps activities. There was lively Q&A about the level of Corps spending and how it compared to inflation adjusted numbers. Janocha notes that there are $3 billion of Jones Act vessels under construction at the moment, but also that the Corps had a recent high of 21 “busted” bids in the last year, versus about 170 contract awards. She suggested that improved flexibility on environmental windows was one way of reducing the number of “busted” bids.
Use of AI by the USACE
Erica of USACE
DredgeWire noted with interest that among the 2025 USACE Initiatives is using AI to “data mine dredging data archives” to identify trends and possible choke points in project schedules.
Among the highlights for attendees was the opportunity to get a special tour of the largest class A ship simulator in the US, operated by MITAGS, (the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies,) the venue for the entire program.
The conference had a well-attended social event Wednesday evening at a nearby Guinness brewery with a speaker on Chesapeake Bay watershed restoration.
Before the general program began Tuesday evening, during the day there were two well-attended training sessions with the WEDA “Dredging 101 fundamentals course” in the AM and then a new course roll-out called “Achieving More Sustainable Management for Dredged Materials.”
Experts from WEDA and industry and the ERDC provided the instruction.
The program closes today, October 17.
