April 2017 / volume 30 issue 2 Leland Schmidt INDEPENDENCE IN TOW The Lindsey Foss took the lead, with the Andrew Foss on the starboard side and the Henry Foss on the port side, as the carrier USS Independence was towed out of Bremerton. More photos on Pages 10-11. HISTORIC MOVE In a challenging job that was The 1070-foot, 61,000-ton ship is completed successfully and safely, being towed around the continent of AS VENERABLE three Foss tugs moved the retired South America, past Cape Horn, to AIRCRAFT CARRIER aircraft carrier USS Independence out its final resting place in Brownsville, of its mothball berth in Bremerton and Texas, where it will take about a year BEGINS LAST VOYAGE handed it off to another company’s tug and a half to cut it up. for a two-month trip to a scrap yard. “The Navy is very concerned about (Continued on pages 10-11) always safe • always ready THE LITTLE THINGS YOU DO Historic Tow Make a Big Difference Three Foss tugs moved the venerable aircraft carrier USS Independence out of its mothball berth in Bremerton. The ship is By Scott Merritt seen time and again in the being towed by another company to a scrap Chief Operating Officer employees whose efforts yard in Brownsville, Texas. have led to our greatest Cover and Pages 10-11 Not until I reached senior accomplishments. We need to management at Foss did I hold each other accountable Remembering Piper Cameron have the opportunity to effect to this standard, on our boats, The accidental death of Piper Cameron significant change in a short in our shipyards and in Scott Merritt on the Emma Foss helped provide impetus amount of time the way I did our offices. for a new safety culture at Foss. The 10th in my first job, as a dispatcher We deliver services with anniversary of her death was observed in Seattle. people, and the little things they do in late February by her family, friends, In dispatch, you see every aspect make a great difference in the success co-workers and clergy. of our services, including taking of this company. Page 6 orders from customers, scheduling crews and boats, recording times and l l l l l l l Top Mariner helping with billing. You get the first Marine Transportation Port Engineer call at night when a boat breaks down The time has come to re-engage our David Atkins stepped up to the plate somewhere in remote Alaska, and you marine and shipyard employees on the recently and, in addition to his regular learn to call the right people to solve issue of safety and identify the areas duties, designed a program that the problem. within our safety culture that we need resulted in all but two of his 35 engineers In short, you get a sense of how the to reinvigorate and processes we receiving licenses or upgrades. His whole business works. And at the end need to change. We must drive our accomplishment netted him a Top Mariner of a shift, you could identify things lost-time and recordable injury rate Award, including a $3,000 cash stipend. you did that drove value or saved down to zero and remove risks from Page 12 the company money. It was really our operations. gratifying to feel like you were the hub We started our Operational 41 Years at Foss of the wheel. Excellence program in 2005, realizing John Barrett, director of Fleet Engineering, Since then, I’ve had a lot of great that our safety culture needed says all the teams he worked with in his jobs at Foss in the San Francisco Bay improving. We worked with our 41 years at the company seemed to pull Area and at headquarters in Seattle, customers, hired experts, did the together and work toward a common goal. and I’ve truly loved 98 percent of research and took on the challenges. Barrett, 64, retired on April 17. them (I won’t single out the one I As a result, our lost-time injury rate Page 16 didn’t like.) I’ve also worked with a of 6.8 per 100 employees per year in lot of great people who have made a 2005 dropped to .14 in 2010. difference, both for me and my career Since then, our injury rates have and for the company as a whole. plateaued and are now slightly rising. As chief operating officer, I have This is something we are going to To submit articles for Tow Bitts, hand picked the people with whom have to get our hands on. We need to please contact Bruce Sherman, editor, I work directly to face the challenges recognize that we’re not done, and our [email protected], or Sonja of the next 5 to 10 years. I know that rates indicate that we are putting our Baron, coordinator of production, [email protected]. The Tow Bitts graphic these are great people who have the marine and shipyard employees at designer is Barbara Hoberecht. Tow Bitts same commitment I do, to do the a greater risk than we should be is published six times a year by Foss very best job and make sure our comfortable with. Maritime for employees, customers and equipment and processes are the Stay tuned. friends. Changes to the Tow Bitts mailing best they can be. list should be referred to Matt Brown, That’s an attitude, in fact, that I’ve (206) 381-3799 or [email protected]. 2 • Foss Tow Bitts • ALWAYS SAFE • April, 2017 Scott Merritt is Appointed Chief Operating Officer; Says Meeting Challenges has made Foss ‘What it is Today’ In his 33 years at Foss, Scott Merritt number of positions until 1993, when has seen the company re-invent itself he opened Foss’ San Francisco Bay several times. operation as its first manager. Later, as When he arrived in the early regional director on the Bay, Merritt 1980s, Foss was mainly a marine oversaw the growth of the region from services provider for forest products a one-tug operation to a provider of a companies. That business took a dive wide range of services, including in the late 1980s, and the company tanker escort and assist, fuel oil shifted its focus to the oil industry, delivery and sand dredging. Scott Merritt offering tanker escort and assist ser- He returned to Seattle and in vices on Puget Sound, San Francisco 2005 became senior vice president competence to accomplish such a Bay and in Southern California. for Harbor Services, and then senior project, “and Foss is among the elite In the mid-2000s, another vice president of Operations. In 2013 group of companies that can do that transformation occurred as Foss he reassumed the leadership role in and do it well.” morphed itself into a premier provider Harbor Services, before being He added, “We were not that of logistics services for projects in appointed to his current position. company in the late 1990s, but extreme environments. The company Foss President and CEO John through the leadership and the vision completed sealifts of oil production Parrott said Merritt brings a deep of Steve Scalzo and Paul Stevens and equipment to Sakhalin Island in the knowledge of the towage industry to the knowledgeable employees and the Siberian Arctic in 2003, 2005 and his new role. expertise of (former President) 2006. Last year, the company per- “He has an even deeper knowledge Gary Faber, we developed the core formed a fourth Sakhalin sealift, and of Foss, our customers, our employees competence, and now we are that another will be undertaken this year. and the culture that ties us all company. We believed we could A third re-invention occurred together,” Parrott said. “I place great perform these functions with the best concurrently with the Arctic projects. trust in Scott’s ability to provide a companies in the world and do it Foss adopted an “operational steady hand at the wheel.” better. We did just that.” excellence” program that gave safety A key milestone for the company, As for future business prospects, the highest priority in everything according to Merritt, was in the 1990s, Merritt said oil and gas and other the company does. The effect was to when Foss set its sights on being forms of energy generation will reduce its lost-time injury rate to a a provider of marine services definitely be a part of the company’s fraction of what it had been. without equal. future. Among those will be the And today, faced with a challeng- “We entered the 90s with new transportation of LNG as a fuel and ing business environment and market ownership and a new sense of what the development of renewable energy conditions and tough competitors who was achievable. We began to see our- projects such as offshore and are catching up with Foss, another selves as potentially one of the premier near-shore wind farms and the marine re-invention may be in order. providers of marine services,” Merritt components of those projects. “This isn’t anything new to Foss said. “It began with our building a Foss also will continue to move Maritime,” Merritt said. “These are worldwide reputation for our tanker sensitive cargo for the commercial similar to challenges we have faced escort and assist services, and for the sector as well as equipment for the in the past, and meeting those technical knowledge, training and aerospace industry. challenges has made us the company competence of our crews and captains. “As we look to how we perform we are today.” We added to our reputation with our these services, what we must continue He continued, “We can build on offshore lighterage operations in the to keep in mind is that the customer the capability and knowledge of our Alaskan Arctic, rocket transport with defines value, and our success is in employees and look for opportunities the Delta Mariner and our delivery of being the solution to their toughest to solve some of our customers biggest oil and gas production modules to the challenges.