In December 2018, Crofton installed 6250 linear feet of 25kV submarine power cable; crossing Harris Creek in Talbot County, MD. In the spring of 2016, Crofton began serving as an agent in the permitting process through Army Corps and Maryland Board of Public Works attending agency meetings and conducting site investigations, which continued to the fall of 2017. During this process, additional steps were introduced to protect a sensitive oyster sanctuary at the installation site. To ensure the preservation of the oyster sanctuary the installation site would require zero turbidity, limiting plowing times to periods of slack water and a major alteration in the installation route that would add nearly 1500 feet of plowing. This ultimately led Crofton to design an innovative method of plow embedment that did not utilize water jets. This new plow dug a narrow 4’ deep trench and deposited the conductors directly into the trench without stirring up the bottom sediment. The installation process required precise navigation and electronic plotting controls to ensure that the trenching was conducted outside of the oyster grounds and that the pulling anchor wasn’t placed these same ecologically sensitive areas. Congratulations to the Crofton team for finding a creative solution to preserve the oyster sanctuaries during installation! Watch below to see how they pulled it off.

On New Year’s Eve, the Samson moved two 150-ton RTGs from Virginia International Gateway (VIG) to Norfolk International Terminals (NIT) with specialized engineered lift rigging. Shortly after the new year, the Samson was scheduled to go to dry dock, but on short notice two more RTGs needed to be moved. The Crofton Crane team decided to shift the Samson’s specialized rigging to the 600-ton Manitowoc 4600 Ringer and on January 11^th, made the two additional RTG transports!

A beautiful backdrop for the last lift of 2018!

Thanks to our clients, vendors, and team members—2018 was a great year. Here are some highlights of what we accomplished together!

This past November, Jeanette MacDonald (PMA), Erica Crofton (PMA), Clay Backus (Project Manager), and Shawn Albin (Chief Estimator & Project Manager) attended Groundbreak 2018 in Austin, Texas. Groundbreak is hosted by Procore, the project management software used by Crofton’s project management team members since 2016. Procore provides Crofton team members with central location for project documents, document management, workflows, and productivity tracking. Since adding Procore to Crofton’s portfolio of technology systems, we’ve received nothing but positive feedback from clients who take advantage of features like real time productivity reporting. While attending Groundbreak, Shawn, Clay, Erica, and Jeanette attended sessions on project budgeting, leadership, Field Productivity, and collaborated with Procore’s representatives in the Innovation Lab, where they could provide feedback to Procore on what’s working well, what can be improved, and suggest new features!

Erica Crofton (left) attends networking reception at Procore Groundbreak.

Crofton is currently executing repairs and improvements to the City of Newport News’ Seafood Industrial Park. The industrial facility brings in about half of the seafood that lands in the Port of Hampton Roads and these improvements are part of an effort to return the park to 100% capacity. Improvements include increasing the capacity of the travel slip, which will support Fairlead’s new travel lift, and adding 4 new 100-ton mooring bollards. Additionally, Crofton will make miscellaneous repairs to the existing concrete bulkhead. For the travel slip, 20 new HP piles were driven, and new cast-in-place concrete cap was poured. The new mooring bollards are 19’ tall x 4’ thick x 9’ wide and are supported by 8 14×89 H piles. “We always enjoy an opportunity to work with the City of Newport News. They’ve got a great team of professionals.”, shared Shawn Albin, Chief Estimator & Project Manager. This phase of improvements is scheduled to be completed by the end of April. Thanks to Trenier King (Foreman), Isaac Hernandez (Carpenter), and crew for their efforts on this project! See 13 News’ coverage here.