Jeremy Jeffreys - The vice president of Fairleads' structural division.

The interview with Jeremy Jeffreys is the first one that we recorded for this podcast. We had this interview in an enormous workshop where parts and pieces of aircraft carriers and submarines are being put together.

It was like sitting in a giant steel Lego factory. Jeremy's been in this business for years. He's got tremendous enthusiasm and expertise. He's really proud of what he does.

We think you'll enjoy this interview. It's springtime in Hampton Roads. This is the season when high school seniors are starting to think about what comes next.

The Regional Maritime Training System, RMTS, was established using a $11 million (41%) Good Jobs Challenge Grant awarded by the Economic Development Administration and is supported by $12.1 million (46%) provided through BlueForge Alliance in partnership with the U.S. Department of the Navy, and $3.5 million (13%) in funding by other sources. The Regional Maritime Training System, led by the Hampton Roads Workforce Council is an equal opportunity employer/program. Auxiliary aids and services are available upon request to individuals with disabilities. VA Relay 711.

Visit www.maritimejobsva.com to discover what career and training opportunities are right for you in the Hampton Roads maritime industry.

Transcript

The interview with Jeremy Jeffreys is the first one that we recorded for this podcast. We had this interview in an enormous workshop where parts and pieces of aircraft carriers and submarines are being put together.
It was like sitting in a giant steel Lego factory. Jeremy's been in this business for years. He's got tremendous enthusiasm and expertise. He's really proud of what he does.
We think you'll enjoy this interview. It's springtime in Hampton Roads. This is the season when high school seniors are starting to think about what comes next.
Prom, graduations coming up, certainly the students are thinking about it, the parents, the other influencers are thinking about what's ahead for me, for my kid, for somebody that I care about.
Some of those kids are going to pick college. Some are not sure. Take me back to 18 -year -old Jeremy Jeffreys. Where were you in March of your 18th year?
Where was your head? What were you thinking about doing? So actually, at that point, I had already pre -enlisted in the Navy. So I was, at that point, I was Looking forward to going down to MEPs and actually signing the paperwork and heading off to boot camp.
Tell me what MEPs is. So MEPs is the pre -staging point for anybody that is going into the military. It's the location where you do your physicals.
You do all your final paperwork prior to going off to the Navy. Is it the military entry processing station? That's exactly what it is. That's a frightening sounding acronym,
isn't it? I don't know that I ever actually knew what the acronym stood for. Great. All right, so you kind of committed to the Navy a little sooner to that, right? I did.
I had pre -enlisted back in, it was October -ish timeframe. My father was in the Navy, grew up on Navy bases. Ultimately,
that was, It was something that was always there for me. It was something that I got the choice, go to college, go to the Navy. I ended up ultimately choosing going to the Navy. And to me,
it was one of the better experiences that I've had. That must have been pretty comforting kind of going into the end of your senior year, going into finals, knowing I've got a job at the end of this.
I know what I'm going to, I know at least where I'm going to start. That's absolutely correct. So when we go through those last moments of high school and, you know,
everybody is worried about it, actually having that pre -planned out and being able to know, hey, all I've got to do is pass my classes here. I'm going out. I'm shipping out. I think it was middle of July is when I actually went to boot camp.
Not knowing what's going to happen, not knowing where you're going to end up. That's a short way in my mind of describing the rest of your career that got you to being right here is the vice president of Fairleads' structural division.
Okay, you start out in the Navy. You're a hull technician, right? So working with steel and pipes, that was the thing you knew that you were going to do. How long were you in the Navy for?
And what came next? So I was actually in the Navy for four years. I was a home maintenance technician, a welder, pipe fitter. Looking back on it, I really feel like my time in the Navy actually really set me up for success going forward.
The teamwork, the camaraderie, those are the type things that really pushed me forward in my future career. When I decided to get out, I had gone out and I was actually looking for jobs being an NDT inspector,
which is non -destructive testing. And at the time, nobody was hiring. So I said, well, I'm going to go in and I'm going to be, I'm going to just be a welder. That's what I know. So I submitted my applications to a couple temporary companies and I actually started work the Wednesday after I submitted my application on a Friday as an NDT inspector at the first place that I put in for the welding job,
which was kind of confusing, but it ended up that they just so happened to be looking for that QA position. So that was with Metro Machine over in the Berkeley section of Norfolk.
Started there in, it was actually August of 1998. Started as a temp working for one of the temp agencies that was providing services and ended up hiring on as a permanent employee about a month and a half,
two months later in September. And again, working in the QA field, I learned all of the NDT disciplines. I had already had a little bit of exposure with that in the Navy,
but really actually being out doing it was one of the big kickers. So you said something in there. I just want to touch on QA, quality assurance. Yep.
So there were already a couple possible career divergences that you were looking at, right? So you came out of the Navy and knew how to weld. Correct. But somewhere in there you learned about non -destructive testing,
which is a branch from, right, it's very closely related to welding. It is. But there's other parts of quality assurance as well. Correct. And don't all those things kind of depend on one another?
They do, they do. You know, quality is the basis for everything that everybody's doing in the shipbuilding industry. And I kind of look at it as safety, quality,
cost, and schedule. Those are the four major pillars for everything that we do in the shipyard. The quality side of things, if you're not building the best quality product that you can every single day,
then those sailors that are out there going into harm's way are not going to be able to depend on that product that you provided to them. So to me, that quality,
it comes just behind safety, but definitely above the cost in the schedule. From the initial jobs working in the QA department, I actually learned another aspect of the quality side,
and that was the preservation side of the house. Through that experience, I was actually asked to start up a new division for Metro,
which was our Blast and Paint Division. And we actually were operating ultra -high pressure water blasting robots. And they truly were robots.
And they actually, they were held onto the side of a ship with a rare earth magnet and had all these servos and all these cool things. And it was very high -tech and it was something that was really neat to be able to learn that and be able to take a ship that had seven to 10 coats of paint on it and very quickly strip that off down to the bare steel and make it to where it was ready to be painted once again.
You said you started that division? So I was the foreman that was selected for starting that division. It did not exist up to that point,
yes. So pretty quickly, right, so you did four years in the Navy. Five years later, you're a foreman, and you're kind of running your own shop that's working with robots,
didn't previously exist within that, at that company, and you're the guy in charge that. How did that happen? What makes you qualified to do that?
It was really, again, going back to that teamwork, dealing with teams, building the right teams, understanding the ability of others and how they can help you to be able to achieve a common goal.
Ultimately, some of it's just being in the right place at the right time. Some of it is having that drive to be able to go out and say,
hey, I want to go out and do that. Just like joining the Navy, there's a lot of times where you've just got to just jump out there and say, hey, yeah,
I'll give it a shot. So it's kind of sticking your neck out there. You know, it does go to show that anybody coming up can quickly if they show the right determination and the right skill sets to be able to do that it's the right guy in the right place the right time willing to do the work sometimes you've got to say yes let's talk about project management for a second so even when I worked here here with you we
often had project managers but they weren't necessarily the credentialed project management professional holder right they didn't they didn't go to the course to get that industry -wide recognition.
Did you have that at the time when you first start out as a project manager? Is that a valuable thing to have now? Ultimately, it is something that somebody that is striving to be a project manager.
I highly recommend it to them to this day. It gives you those skills that I just described, the scheduling, the management, the cost. It teaches you earn value management,
a team. If you have a college degree,
that's another path to get into it, but it's not the only one. How useful would it be for somebody applying for a job at Fairlead to walk in who's got a project management professional credential?
Oh, absolutely. It's definitely useful. When we're going through somebody's resume and we see that PMP certification on there, to me, the PMP, it's one of those triggers that makes me look a little harder at that person.
Sort of like MBA. You know, there's these different acronyms that stick out that say, hey, I went a little bit further, I went a little bit above and beyond what that other guy did.
And anybody can say, hey, I'm a project manager, but when you've actually got that certification behind that, it actually gives you that, at least that additional look.
But once I start talking to you, I know that you have that experience to know what does EVMS stand for? That's Earn Value Management System.
You've got the ability to lay out a schedule and work to a schedule. It gives you those basic credentials. Okay. You used two credentials in there, PMP and MBA.
Yep. Which would you hire today? Depends on what the job is. Oh, come on, which would you rather hire? I know I would have rather had a PMP over an NBN.
Yeah, so ultimately for, if I'm seriously bringing somebody in as a project manager, 100 % of PMP. I remember reporting to my first ship at 22 years old,
thinking I'd had a bunch of training and education before. I'm getting there the first time in realizing, no, this is is real now, right? And being kind of in, not kind of, I was absolutely intimidated walking up for the first time,
but pretty quickly like you get acclimated to it, right? Everybody there wants you to succeed, you're all on the same team, and then it gets to be familiar going from place to place. And I feel like,
I wonder if that's a hindrance for people getting into the industry because they're ships, They're classified. You don't get easy access to it, but here we are trying to recruit people into that field,
whether it's in uniform or on the civilian side. And it's always been sort of like walled off. You see them off in the distance. You know, when I first joined the Navy, it was the same way.
You know, you get... Me personally, I was on that many aircraft carrier. And as you're going through the bowels of that ship and not knowing how to get down to laundry or how to get down to the barber shop or whatever that you need to do,
it takes you a little bit of time to get used to that. When you come into a shipyard, part of the initial training that's given is how do you read those bullseys? How do you know which way is forward,
which way is aft? How do you know what is port? What is starboard? Port is your left side, starboard's your right side. When you're in a civilian role, you have no clue what port and starboard is.
Just being able to understand what the bells mean when the ship rings the bells and understand the different pieces and parts,
that's part of what you normally will get that training in your indoctrination. So after working in the role as a project manager for approximately 10 years,
almost 15 years, I actually took on a role as basically the senior project manager in charge of handling all of the work at BA.
So instead of having just the trades and the project managers, Now I was dealing with multiple ships, multiple different classes, multiple different customers from the BAA system side of the house.
Again, I was still working for Metro Machine, but we had a teaming agreement to where we were providing support to them. After about a year and a half, we had NASCO,
San Diego, actually approached Metro Machine and decided to buy us. So when Metro Machine was purchased by NASCO San Diego and we became NASCO Norfolk,
I moved into a new role as the general superintendent. A general superintendent actually reported directly up to the vice president of production and From that role I had all of production for Metro and I had all of the program side of the house from Metro Machine.
And that was for both our prime contracts and for our subcontracts and teaming contracts. Had had that role for approximately two years also and at that point that's when Earl Industries was also purchased by NASCO,
San Diego, and they were rolled into the foal also as NASCO Norfolk. And so that brought a lot of influx and a lot of different groups coming together.
We now had NASCO San Diego saying, this is how I want things to be done. We had NASCO Norfolk slash Metro Machine saying,
this is the way I do things. and you had Earl Industries slash NASCO, Norfolk, that said, this is the way I do things. So typically when that happens, every company's got their own IT system,
they have their own accounting procedures, their quality assurance procedures, their wealth procedures, all those things are kind of unique to those. And now you have these three points coming together with these mergers and pre -existing companies that now have to decide what's the way forward.
That's absolutely correct. Thank you. The idea was that by bringing the two companies,
Earl Industries and Metro together, we would make a better company in the long run. Does that create opportunities for people when things like that happen? So that's exactly what happens.
At that point, I was actually asked to go up and take over the scheduling department. Scheduling was completely different between the two different companies. What we were able to do was then combine those two organizations and come up with a new process and a new procedure going forward that actually was born out of the combination of the two.
So I started as the scheduling manager and ran the scheduling department for NASCO Norfolk. That was a very, very tough learning experience because,
yes, I had used Microsoft project, but I had not used any of the higher level scheduling software at that point. I had to go through it, learn that on my own, teach myself how to use that software,
and not only be able to teach myself how to use it to where I was proficient, but the folks below me had to know the processes and the procedures to be able to use that.
How did you teach yourself how to do that? Google. Really, Google is your friend on a lot of this stuff. Google has been great in the fact of being able to say,
I know this program, whether it's Excel or Primavera or Microsoft Project. You know it can do that. Well,
somebody's already asked that question. Go on Google, ask that question, and now with ChatGPT, it's even easier. You can ask complex questions, and it'll normally give you the answer that you're looking for.
You're using ChatGPT now to solve problems. Absolutely. There are multiple times that I will be deep in an Excel sheet and I'll say,
I know this can do that. I can type in exactly what I want from chat GPT and it'll tell me exactly how to do that. That's amazing for the sort of skills that people would have to sign up for a course to sit through hours or days to distill out that one or two pieces of information they chat GBT and YouTube are really answering a lot of these questions.
Absolutely, absolutely. It's a free resource that everybody should be trying to use. And even as you're looking at what is a DDG,
go on the internet. The internet actually has everything about a DDG there. You can figure out what is a Foksel. What is the stern of the ship?
What is the bridge? Everything's there. There's information there. Ask the questions and the answers will be presented. It may not help you find the laundry on laundry day.
It won't. It won't. You still need your mentor for that. Okay. So, lead scheduler. Yep. Then what? So from scheduling manager,
I then moved into estimating. And that was actually a somewhat of a natural transition because as a project manager, you're constantly looking at how am I going to do this job?
What resources am I going to use to do that job? And what's it going to cost me to do that job? So ultimately, as I progressed through at Metro Machine,
I had a lot of responsibilities of reviewing bids and working with those estimators, working with the schedulers, working with the programs teams, and it allowed for a natural transition for me to go in and again kind of rebamp the way that we did the estimating.
I didn't have as much revamping that we had to do, but we did come online with new systems while I was there working with electronic estimating procedures and different things.
It was a great experience. It gave me a broader knowledge of contracts and contract negotiations and the different aspects that I hadn't had to that point.
Okay. So from my estimating manager position, I had the opportunity to to come over to Fairlead at that point. I came over to Fairlead working for you at the Fairlead Boat Works facility over in Newport News.
This is a good time to say best career shift you've ever had. I'll put it in there for you. Go ahead. I'll find the words. No, it was. It really was.
It was a great career shift. I came over as the Director of Operations. and it was, again, it was jumping out on the ledge.
You know, I'd worked at Metro Machines slash NASCO for 20 years, and all of a sudden I was going to a new job. I was going to, from working on these giant gray -hold ships to working on these little gray -hauled ships,
you know. And when I say little, there's still 110 foot long, 220 tons, you know, there's still big vessels, but it's a different vessel. You know, when you go on to those,
you're now having to navigate narrow, small compartments, whereas on the bigger ships, it's, you know, giant engine rooms. So it was nerve wracking coming over there.
Really enjoyed my time there in the yard. It was a learning experience that I had never dealt with commercial customers. And now I was dealing with military customers from the Navy,
from the Army, from the Coast Guard. And at the same time, I'm dealing with commercial fishermen, commercial tugboats, all the fun experiences that come with that.
But it's one of those things that There's so many different opportunities at all the different shipyards throughout the area. BA .E and NASCO and MHAI,
really those shipyards, they deal with the big Navy ships. Kalana, us, East Coast repair, we also deal with the big Navy customers,
but we also get to deal with the local customers, the fishermen and the boat operators. It was always hard to get bored in that job because each day was going to be something different.
It was always something different. It's a new vessel. It's a new customer. It's a different environment. Different project. Even if you see the same boat coming back, it's a new project again.
Yep. That's for sure. And there were always opportunities. You know, that's again, kind of going back to that saying yes. You know, that's how I came over and started working at are sections of aircraft carriers that are coming together,
right? These, the world's most powerful warships are built right here in our backyard, literally feet behind you right now. Yep. This didn't exist when you and I started at Fairlead.
No. And within six years now, we've gone from none of this to now you're building sections of aircraft carriers. Yeah, I don't like to brag on that stuff.
This is the time to brag a little bit. I know. Let me give you a lead here. All right. You stepped in to create a division at Fairlead that the company wanted to do,
right? The legacy of this company had worked on aircraft carriers before when we were part of Earl. We wanted to get back into that business because we liked because we recruited the talent that that could do it.
But no small part of that was because the nation needs it. Absolutely. There's not enough capacity. There wasn't enough capacity at the time. There still isn't. And we needed somebody to stand up this division to do it.
Yeah. We found Jeremy Jeffreys. Yeah. So like you say, Earl Industries actually helped to decommission CVN 65. That was the old enterprise.
Now I'm building CVN 80 the new enterprise in this facility. Earl Industries has had the hand in the decommissioning and the rebirth of the new enterprise.
Ultimately, fairly looked to the industry and saw that at some point there was going to be the need for additional support in building the aircraft carriers.
We saw that there was going to be the need for supporting building the Columbia class submarines. There was going to be the need for supporting the Virginia class submarines. Here at Fairlead Structures,
we are currently working Columbia class, Virginia class, and the CVN class of United States warships that everybody thinks of electric boat,
everybody thinks of Newport News. We're Portsmouth, Virginia, and we are building warships at this point. How many years is that going to last? So right now,
I would say very conservatively, it's going to last at least another 60 years. 60 years? Six zero years. As you're going through and you start to understand the fact that the Nimitz carriers have to be decommissioned and replaced with the Ford class carriers,
and it takes anywhere from 8 to 10 years to build each Ford class carrier. Currently, we're working on the third Ford class carrier. If it's a 10 -year cycle for each of those carriers,
then you're looking at least another 10 aircraft carriers that are going to be built. So that's at least that, you know, 30 years or more that we're going to be out there doing more and more and more.
That sounds a little bit like job security. It's definitely job security. This business isn't going away, is it? No. In fact, right now there's not enough talent in the industry and we're constantly looking for more.
How many people have you hired? How much has the company grown since you started the Structures Division? So the Structures Division started as me plus one.
We have we have currently got up to just over 85 employees and over the next six months I'm looking to be grading up to close to 150 employees.
My intent is to maintain at about that 150 employees at least for the next two to three years and then to continue to step up and grow up as we develop new facilities and and bring other processes online.
Those people that you need to hire, how similar are those career path opportunities to your own. They're identical. I mean, I truly feel that,
you know, even if it's an electricians made in the Navy, they've got that that teamwork, that experience to be able to say, hey, I want to be part of that team.
You know, ultimately, I feel that that we can take anybody from high school, anybody from the Navy and be able to teach them and transform them to become a shipyard employee a welder a ship fitter a rigger even if even if they want to be a planner or something else that's not on the deck plates there's those trades available also you've talked about so many of these pathways that you took you started out as a
welder. And that's a great job. You could still be welding today if you wanted to, couldn't you? Yep, absolutely. Yet you've had all of these other opportunities.
Is that really unique to you? No, I don't think it's unique. I think it's something that everybody is going to experience throughout their career. It's just being able to say yes and being able to step off that ledge and understand that you may not know exactly what's going to happen in the future,
and you may not know exactly how you're going to get there, but trust that working with others and working and asking the right questions and working hard is going to bring you to the proper conclusions to be able to complete your Jeremy,
you've been telling us about your career path, unique to you, but not unobtainable. It's a path that, or something similar to it,
there's an opportunity for somebody else to create their unique path through this shipbuilding ship repair. Is it fun? Do you like what you're doing? Would you,
what do you tell 18 year old Jeremy Jeffreys out there today saying, I don't know what I want to do. Well, I love it. And actually, I'll tell you what I tell 23 -year -old Jeremy Jeffreys, my son, he actually works with us at Fairlead now. And he's now moving into another role because, you know what, he said yes. It's another role that he's going to be helping to develop systems and develop the project management tools behind the scenes from the IT side of things.
So it's like I said earlier, it's not just the guys that are out welding and ship fitting. It's all the guys and girls all throughout that we need to be able to support us.
We kind of see it as a wheel and spoke system. You know, ultimately the hub of that entire wheel, that's the welders and the ship fitters and those guys on the deck plate.
But if they don't get the welding wire when they need it, or they don't get the steel when they need it, they can't put that together. So you have to have all that support of everybody around that wagon wheel supporting that hub.
Absolutely, I love it. It's like every single day, you know, you get a chance to play and construct and build.
And every single unit that we build and send out on a barge, we're able to say, hey, that's another piece of that aircraft carrier that we've sent down the river, that Newport News is then going to tie together and eventually commission as the CVN 80,
the S. Enterprise. In that short little burst of enthusiasm, you just touched on several other career opportunities in there that we're going to explore in this podcast series that we just can't take any more time to talk about IT,
but logistics management, warehousing, all that other stuff. And the enthusiasm absolutely comes through. The thing that I heard is I think the title for this,
the opportunities are there, say yes. Absolutely. Absolutely yes. And that's a great way to end it. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you very much.