Camille Crofton Cherry of Crofton - Commercial Diving and Marine Construction

Our interview with Camille Crofton occurred just days after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge just outside of Baltimore. It's one of those incidents that makes us aware of how important the skilled trades are in our daily life. It's also a great story about a multi -generational family -owned business. 

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Transcript

Our interview with Camille Crofton occurred just days after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge just outside of Baltimore. It's one of those incidents that makes us aware of how important the skilled trades are in our daily life.
It's also a great story about a multi -generational family -owned business. We had talked in the preparation for this.
we had talked about that you're concerned that you're not a tradesperson. And let me open up by saying, I'm not either, right? I'm relatively handy with tools.
I can change out a faucet. I can change out of an electrical socket. I cannot weld. But there are things that I can do because I feel like I need to be self -sufficient at those things.
But that's not the same as being a skilled trades person. So let me relieve you of that burden. Okay, thank you. The expectation here is not that you are,
but I think it really illustrates so well why this conversation is so important. Because when those things happen, when it's something more complex than just a clogged drain or a faucet handle that's loose,
we all really depend on a skilled trades person. And that's a, those are very simplified examples and they, but they get complex so quick. Yeah. And we're sitting here a couple days after the terrible tragedy in Baltimore with the Francis Scott Key Bridge that had an elision with a cargo ship and is collapsed.
And we might get a chance to talk about what, what Crofton's role there may may be. But that's a local, a regional, a national,
and even a global trade impact that's going to rely on skilled trades people. 100%. And I think it, you know, to your point, it's a lot of the roles that contribute to that that get kind of forgotten about because they're kind of behind the scenes,
even even though for the things that people are using every day, like the bridges that they're using to go back and forth to work, the products that they're consuming that come through our ports, the collateral impact of such a significant piece of our infrastructure being in that condition is the ramifications are gonna be huge.
And it's the skilled tradespeople that we're gonna lean on to bring that piece of infrastructure back together again so that, so that, you know,
our society and our country can keep moving. And that's just one tragic event, but we're really relying on people like that all day long, every day. Every day. And you know this in your industry,
which explain what Crofton does, because it's not one thing, is it? No. So we started out as one thing. We were founded in 1949 as as a commercial diving company.
But now, present day, we're a full -service marine contractor. We provide commercial diving services, heavy marine construction, and equipment rental, mainly crane rental and rigging services,
but also barge and tug services as well. And we focus mainly on the local maritime industry here and the mid -Atlantic region, but up and down the east coast as well. So the local maritime industry is really painting with a very broad brush.
Yeah. So that includes, that includes certainly our ports and our terminals, both, you know, locally owned and private. We're in all of our shipyards servicing the ship repair and shipbuilding industries.
We're doing facility maintenance and expansion work on any kind of commercial or industrial waterfront property. We provide services to support the maritime industry and those who are directly involved in the maritime industry.
So it's shipping and supply chain and logistics, it's shipbuilding and ship repair. But our divers, our crane operators, our boat captains, our welders, all of those people, they're working in those trades and working in to support that industry.
And it seems like they cross those lines pretty frequently, right? Your boat captains are working in all of those industries. Yes, absolutely. And that really,
I mean, that was how us getting involved in so many different aspects of the maritime industry was really born. There is so much overlap in what these facilities and the clients need.
You need a commercial diver to perform the underwater inspection of a facility to determine what kind of construction work needs to be done on it. And to do that construction work, you need all the heavy equipment to do it.
And so us getting involved in those segments of the industry was really just born out of an entrepreneurial spirit and being willing to take on a project and address the need of our existing clients in the commercial diving space.
So for example, one of your crane operators could be supporting diving operations one day. Absolutely. And you recently completed a project here in Portsmouth on the downtown...
The Portsmouth Seawall. The Portsmouth Seawall. And that seems like you ended up pulling all areas of your business together. Absolutely. I mean, that is a great example of all three of those segments of our business working together to,
you know, for a finished product. I mean, the work on the Portsmouth Seawall, that example is that goes back for over a decade of when that really began and it began because of an emergency inspection that took place because the seawall was failing and so we performed an underwater inspection to determine what condition was it really in and help them come up with a plan on how to address it and then we were fortunate
enough to be able to we are awarded contracts like that through competitive low bid because it's through a city. But we were fortunate enough to be able to bid the work and we're awarded the work phase after phase after phase.
But yeah, we have all of those traits are working on those on projects like that. We have our divers who are performing work, our heavy equipment operators are there, our crane operators, our boat captains.
We have carpentry out there. There's, yeah, it's a wide variety. Some of those sound like relatively senior positions where somebody's in the business for a number of years.
Do they come into those positions? Can somebody grow into that? How does somebody join Crofton and where are the points of entry? In most cases, folks are coming to us already having that vocational trait.
They've already gotten their certification or their credentials, and they're coming to us with that. You know, for our commercial divers, they've been through an ADCI accredited dive school, and those are up and down the East Coast.
For our crane operators, they're coming to us with an NCCCO certification. So you just mentioned a couple of acronyms for accreditation.
Yeah, so ADCI stands for Association of Diving Contractors International. They're an industry organization and their board is comprised of diving contractors. And so they really provide a lot of guidance and oversight on safety protocol,
but also what are the standards that are needed in the diving industry for someone to be a competent tradesperson. So a diver might come to us right out of dive school and they can come to us with an ADCI certification card.
And we know that, And we know now that they've come through an accredited dive school and they're ready to be put to work. So those accreditations, do you find that they exist in most of the industries that you work in?
All of our crane operators are going to be in CCCO certified. And I hope I can get this acronym right, but it's, I believe it's the National Commission for the certification of crane operators. And that's just another credentialing body that lets you know that they've gone through the training both an operator's test and a written test so that they know how to use their equipment appropriately.
There's a lot of math involved in when they're making those lifts and knowing how far out to expend their boom for the location that they're at. There's a lot that goes into that. So you know that when they're coming,
when you have a candidate who has that certification, you know that they're equipped to perform that work. So you wouldn't hire a crane operator that doesn't have that certification? Not necessarily.
We have had folks that have come to work with us and they're here for a while and then they go through that NCCO certification. You know, one I think really good example of like an entry point into the maritime industry is,
you know, we do have a handful of, or quite a bit of labor, of skilled labor that works here. It's, you know, they may not have gone through a vocational trade, but they've started out here in a labor position,
and then they're exposed to such a wide variety of work environments and skilled trades. Something might pique their interest. It might be being a crane operator.
It might be, oh, you know, I think I would actually want to go be a diver. You know, it might be, oh, I've spent some time now. sales and dispatch.
You know, there's lots of path, there's lots of different pathways that people are going to explore once they've had the exposure in the field. And really, that makes someone an extremely valuable asset in their company.
If you have the field experience and you have the interest and the aptitude and the ambition to, you know, work in other roles within an organization,
having that field experience makes you an extremely valuable candidate. Because that stuff's really hard to train on. You can train on project management, you can train on, you know, managerial accounting,
you can train on leadership topics, but if you can't really put someone in a project manager role, if they've had no exposure or no experience to work like that,
It's very difficult. Is that pretty common at Crofton and other marine industries that you know of, that people will come in in one position, but over the course of a career,
do multiple things? For sure. I mean, we have, I'd say, I mean, we have a handful of project managers right now that started out as divers here at Crofton. We have someone in our equipment rental office now who used to be a crane operator,
and now he's working in sales and dispatch. Our division manager on our dive side was a diver with us decades ago now. But yeah, so there's lots of opportunities.
And I think that's a pattern in companies like ours, because it's truly hard to find folks who have that experience, but also are ready to step into those managerial or leadership roles.
What would make a diver or a crane operator and want to come off their rigs and go do a different job? Maybe they want to travel less. Maybe they want to work out of the elements.
Maybe they're getting a little older and they want something that's a little less taxing on their bodies. There could be a wide variety of reasons. And Crofton has been in business for how long now?
Since 1949. That's a long history and I think pretty uncommon for a multi -generational business to survive like that.
Yeah, I mean, we are, we've been very fortunate and we're very thankful. We're in our 75th year anniversary this year in 2024, so we're really excited about that.
And we do have a lot of industry in our company and we're we're so thankful for that because it makes all the difference in terms of expertise and also training the up and coming generation of our workforce a few moments ago you talked about the Portsmouth seawall being a decade long project that says an awful lot about the future of the industry this isn't this isn't ephemeral this is not going away yeah that's
exactly right i mean This industry is a pillar of our local community, our region, our state, our country. There are global ramifications to the maritime and supply chain logistics industry.
So it's not going anywhere. What would make somebody want to be a diver? And what makes a good diver? You know, I think that you've got to have an aptitude,
a little bit of an aptitude for mechanics. Top -side skills are really important. What's the top -side skill? So, yeah, if you have an aptitude for mechanics or welding,
things like that, that's the kind of work you're going to be doing below the water line. A lot of times, you need those skills to be able to be an effective diver underwater.
So someone who has the aptitude for that, someone who, at least in our area is not afraid of working in total darkness. In many cases,
these divers are working completely in the blind just because of the way the water is in our area. So they've got to be willing to work in some pretty unique environments. But I think it's also worth noting that while their work is invisible,
in many cases, because it is happening below the water line. A lot of people don't really get to see everything they're doing. They touch so many things in our community that we would never think of.
They're working in plants that are distributing electricity and helping maintain those plants. They are performing underwater inspections on the bridges that we cross every day.
We performed the underwater inspections for the Chesape Bay Bridge tunnel so there's just there's so many opportunities for whether it be a commercial diver or a crane operator or whatever skilled trade it is there's so many opportunities for them to put their hands on parts of their community and have a direct impact on that which I think is one of the coolest parts of working in you know a skilled trade environment
has technology change diving Yes, but I'm probably not the best person to speak on it. Have you ever been a diver?
Have you ever one in the rig? I have not ever suited up, but that's not because I haven't volunteered. I have volunteered and they haven't called my bluff yet. I volunteered to suit up and go in the training tank.
So maybe when the weather gets a little warmer, they will take me up on that, but it'll be on record now. What's a path for somebody that comes and applies for an entry -level job at Crofton?
Where do they start out? How do they get to run Samson? Yeah, well, Sampton, she's a big one. Mostly, the most common path for a crane operator would probably be like on a hydraulic truck crane.
But a path for that, in many of the cases, All of our personnel are going to get rigor and signal person training, and that's a really great entry point into that role,
because on every crane job, you're going to have a rigor and a signal person. And this is the person that's on the ground that you have to maintain a clear line of sight on the whole time,
and they're kind of, they're a little bit of your spotter. You know, in the same way you would back up your track and you have a spotter behind you, you're rigoring your signal person is going to be your your eyes on the ground they're going to help you with your rigging they're going to do your rigging inspections and and they're your partner on that job so you start out as a spotter and then eventually get some
training here certification so if a person wanted to become a certified crane operator they would have to pursue the NCCO certification which a number of our crane operators have done.
And we have helped put them through that as well. So we're sitting here a couple days after the elision between the ship and the Francis Scott Key Bridge up in Baltimore and the terrible tragedy that that has turned into.
We talked a little bit before we started recording that you did get a phone call the morning of asking about availability of your equipment in order to go assist there.
So how is it that a company in Norfolk, hundreds of miles away from Baltimore, gets that phone call? I think it's because in a situation like this, it's an all hands -on -deck kind of situation.
And the nature of the work is highly specialized. It requires very skilled tradespeople who they're the only ones.
They're going to be able to pull this off and really provide the support that's needed. and um you know,
anyone who's available to support, I'm sure they're, they're trying to capture, they're casting a wide net in terms of tapping into any available resources,
it's going to take a lot. The scale of this is such that, and unanticipated, so the resources are rather limited.
Yes, because it is highly specialized. You're going to have, you know, whether it's Crofton or not, you're going to have divers who are, you know, performing work below the water line for recovery.
And they're also going to be performing rigging. They're going to do all the rigging when you're, you know, hooking the crane rigging up to attach to probably, you know, bridge components to lift those.
There's all kinds of safety factors to consider there because you want to, you don't know how maybe the bridge pieces are laying underwater,
and that's a factor of how accessible they are, how accessible it is to be able to rig them safely. Weather conditions are going to be a factor to be able to do all that safely.
You need huge pieces of equipment to do that, you know, floating crane barges, you're going to need tugboats, crew vessels. It's a lot. It's a lot of moving parts.
And again, whether that's Crofton or other people. And there's, you know, the East Coast and our mid -Atlantic region, you know, we spoke earlier about how the maritime industry is just such a pillar of our economy and our infrastructure.
So we're fortunate to have a lot of resources because our region warrants that. But It is very specialized work and it's really tragic and unfortunate situations like this that really shed a light on how critical those roles are.
The resources are limited such that we really are the next closest port available that has anything that can support them in the recovery and eventually the rebuilding of this.
And the same sorts of skilled tradesmen that are involved in recovering and restoring commerce from this disaster are going to be required to build a new bridge.
Mm -hmm. Let's talk about a couple things. You want to talk a little bit of how you got to be part of Crofton. Obviously, it's a family -owned business, but that doesn't mean that surely not every Crofton works in the business,
right? That's true. Yeah, so I came to work at Crofton right out of undergrad and I've worked in a number of different capacities.
I started out in reception, you know, helping on the administrative side and then worked in marketing and communications and I still do a lot of that work. And then now I also do a little bit of just organizational development.
Somebody who didn't know this industry before, who didn't grow up in it, could comfortably come to work here and feel like I don't need to know everything about the business or how to operate a crane or how to be a diver,
but I could come to work at a place where people care about my well -being, want me to go home in the same condition that I showed up at work, and actually grow a future with the company.
They're going to teach me the terminology, Teach me how to be safe and give me a pathway to obtain some skills that I can build a career around. You know,
if there's a person out there who thinks I am not sure that college is for me, but I'm also not really sure what route I want to go vocationally, I would encourage them to reach out to human resources departments,
you know, whether it's at Crofton or other places. Ask questions. Be curious. Ask, you know, what would it take for me to be an attractive candidate, you know, and be considered for an entry -level position?
I'm really interested in the maritime industry, and I want to learn more about what the options are available, you know, to me. How can I make myself an attractive candidate? Some of what that looks like is just exposure.
If you have exposure to working on the water, if you have exposure to some kind of construction environments, maybe that's a program or a course at your school, maybe it's volunteering for how. us at careers at crofton .com and they'll be connected directly to our human resources department so does your human resources department take those kind of calls are they yeah are they comfortable with taking somebody that's going
to be unsure and a little halting on the phone yes they are comfortable with taking those calls and they do take those calls they interact frequently with our with our applicants and our candidates um It is in our best interest to do so.
We want to have a wide pool of candidates, and it is our honor to have people interested in coming to work at Crofton.
So we definitely want to talk to people. We definitely want to answer those questions, and we definitely want to remove any kind of fear or hesitation or ambiguity around,
what does it really mean to work on the water and is this something that's accessible to me so yes please reach out are there any other venues that people can go to to see Croft in our inaction or talk to somebody that might be working in a career field that they're interested in we do have a YouTube channel so as anyone ever was kind of curious about what do those projects look like what are they even what are
they even doing out there. They can find us on any of our social media pages. We're on Facebook. We're on LinkedIn. We're on YouTube. We're on Instagram. So that's a great piece to kind of poke around and see what those work environments are like.
And I would just like get online, get curious, do a little research. There's so much information out there. Parents, if you're curious about what the potentials are,
or what the potential is for your children or guidance counselors, if you're curious about the potential for your students, check out the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There's all kinds of information about the potential growth in different roles, what the average compensation rates are in different markets. So there's lots of information out there, and we just need people to be curious.
And I think, you know, doing what you're doing, and if we keep these conversations it's it's only going to help raise awareness for the vast opportunity that is really here in the maritime ministry for really meaningful long careers maybe it's the parents and teachers and guidance counselors that need to go to Instagram and start looking at some of those clips and see the interesting work that happens yeah yeah want to
go suit up and get in the dive tank definitely let's go yeah somebody finally called My Blah.