Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company (GLDD)

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Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company (GLDD) provides marine dredging and engineering services that help shape the environment as well as provide transportation resources of communities across the world, including America’s largest cities and busiest ports.

Founded in 1890 as the partnership of William A. Lydon and Fred C. Drews, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company was incorporated under its present name in 1905. In its earliest years, GLD&D excavated intakes and outfalls for Chicago's water distribution system. The company was prime contractor for the building of the Michigan Avenue Bridge, and most of the principal landmarks on the Chicago's renowned lakefront are on land or foundations put in place by Great Lakes. In one of the earliest and largest landfills in U.S. history, the company expanded Chicago's Lake Michigan shoreline along a thirteen-mile front. During World War II, the firm constructed the MacArthur Lock at Sault Ste. Marie, and dredged for graving docks on the East Coast for the construction of the U.S. Navy's Missouri class of battleships. Great Lakes did much of the stateside dredging at the time of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, increasing the capability of ports on the Great Lakes to accommodate large cargo vessels. During the 1970s, Great Lakes was instrumental in the privatization of the trailing suction hopper dredging industry in America, starting with the construction of the Manhattan Island class of self-propelled trailing suction hopper dredges. All told, Great Lakes invested over US$100 million in trailing suction hopper dredge development and construction in the 1970s and 1980s. This commitment of investment in equipment continued in the 1990s with the construction of the world's largest dipper dredge, the purchase and upgrading of numerous large and small hydraulic cutterhead dredges, the purchase and upgrading of a 5000-m3 trailing suction hopper dredge, and construction of a large new hydraulic excavator. International expansion also came during the 1970-1999 era, as the company took on many assignments abroad. In 1971, the company's stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Fourteen years later, Great Lakes' stock was bought by Chicago-based Itel Corporation, and in 1991 was purchased by the Blackstone Investment Group, of New York. In 1998 the company was purchased by Vectura Holding Company LLC, a CitiCorp venture capital subsidiary. The company was responsible for much of the work in fulfillment of the provisions of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, with expansion and deepening projects undertaken at ports on all American coasts. This work included the Kill Van Kull Projects in New York Harbor, the largest dredging contract ever let by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was completed in 1995. In addition, to the New York project, GLD&D recently has been the principal dredging contractor in the development of two massive landfill projects, Pier J and Pier 400 in the Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, California. These created a total of 670 acres (271 hectares) of new port infrastructure. In the Houston (Texas) Ship Channel, Great Lakes deepened the entrance channel to a forty-two to forty-seven foot depth, an 800-foot width, and a ten-and-a-half-mile length. In Boston Harbor (Massachussetts), the company removed a total of more than 3.5 million cubic meters of silt, clay and rock to create a forty-foot depth. This project featured novel dredging and disposal techniques to accommodate the dredging of contaminated harbor bottom materials. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company is the largest dredging contractor in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world. Great Lakes' versatile fleet of hydraulic cutterhead, clamshell, backhoe, trailing suction hopper dredges, drillboats and attendant plant includes twenty-eight dredges and is valued in excess of US$700 million. It is the largest dredging fleet in the U.S. The company maintains marine yards in six locations.

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