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Vigor Industrial: Specialized Steel Fabrication for the Hydro Industry and Beyond
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igor is a diversified industrial business that serves a wide variety of markets, including ship repair, marine vessel fabrication, aerospace and defense, bridge construction, nuclear facilities, and the hydropower industry. Its products for the hydropower industry include gates, water control systems, fish control structures, and hydroelectric facilities. In this interview, Brian Akin, Vigor’s director of sales for infrastructure and energy, and Benton Strong, its senior manager for public affairs, tell us about the company’s origins, its current work, and its vision for the future. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions. Brian Akin: I’m the director of sales for infrastructure and energy at Vigor. I started working in the steel fabrication industry as a summer intern and have worked in estimating, program management, and sales for over 30 years. Benton Strong: I have worked in communications at the local, state, and federal levels in government, advocacy, and political campaigns. Born and raised a short drive from Vigor’s Harbor Island shipyard in Seattle, I now work on communications for Vigor and manage the company’s government affairs at the local and state levels in Oregon. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about Vigor. Brian Akin: Vigor is an industrial company that services the U.S. military, including the U.S. Navy; the cruise ship industry; and other key partners. In addition to ship repair, we have a complex fabrication division. It services the nuclear market, where we are very active; the bridge market; the hydroelectric market; and the aerospace and defense market. We also do new-build construction, including building ferries for the State of Washington and other governments and building specialty watercraft for the U.S. military and international customers. In the hydroelectric field, we service large, complex gates and water control systems and renewable power generation facilities, which are common in the Columbia and Snake River systems, right in our backyard.
24 | HYDRO LEADER | September 2021
1,500 of whom are in the Portland region, which is also where we do our hydro work. Currently, our complex fabrication is primarily done in our locations in the greater Portland metro area. Vigor operates as part of Titan Acquisition Holdings, our parent company. Other parts of the family of companies under Titan include MHI, based in Norfolk, Virginia, and Continental Maritime of San Diego, California. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your products. Brian Akin: People turn to us first and foremost because of our ability to build large, complex structures. We are a full turnkey integrator of these systems, by which I mean that we fabricate, machine, and also provide the coatings for these components. Our ability to ship both nationally and internationally is another big advantage. We are active in the Midwest and on the East Coast for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and private energy companies. In hydro, we’ve gone as far as Ceresco Dam in Puerto Rico. The foundation of these capabilities is our tremendously skilled workforce. Hydro Leader: Would you give us some examples of the hydro-related work you do? Brian Akin: We have done significant work in the Midwest for the Army Corps, which has long been a valued customer. We have built a wide variety of water control gates for the three rivers that converge on the Pittsburgh District in the Ohio Valley. Our work in the Northwest on the Snake and Columbia tributaries from the Portland area up into Idaho includes providing a large number of complex miter gates for the lock and dam systems that allow barges to pass the dams on these rivers. We built big tainter gates for Folsom Dam in hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF VIGOR.
Benton Strong: We’re active in both national and international markets and are headquartered in Portland, Oregon. We have shipyards in Swan Island in Portland; Seattle, Washington; and Ketchikan, Alaska, as well as two other fabrication facilities in the greater Portland region and satellite operations in other places, including Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. We have approximately 2,200 employees across all locations, about
Tainter gates from the Folsom Dam auxiliary spillway.
