Company rises from Oregon City, Vancouver
by Ray Hughey

Advanced American Diving Service of Oregon City and the M Cutter Co. of Vancouver, Wash., have reorganized under a newly created parent company, Advanced American Construction Inc.

Advanced American Diving and M Cutter will continue providing their services individually as well as under the new American Advanced Construction flag, General Manager Scott Burgess said.

The new parent name and structure, adopted July 1, better reflects the broader range of marine work now done by Advanced American Diving Services, Burgess added. It will also more readily identify the company as a prime contractor when it moves into new areas such as Alaska and California.

Advanced American Diving Services has grown and evolved since Kent Cochran and the late Konrad Schweiger founded it as a commercial diving enterprise in 1983.

That growth – and an anticipation of future growth – led the marine construction company in 1999 to buy M Cutter, which provides emergency machinery and equipment repairs for Northwest marine and industrial clients, including grain elevators and paper and steel mills. M Cutter also works with Advanced American Diving Services on marine projects which require fabricating and machining parts, such as those needed for dam repair and maintenance.

“Diving and salvage still represent a very significant portion of our day-to-day work,” Burgess said. “Our real focus is heavy marine construction – docks, dams, piers and bridges.”

The owners of all three companies are – Dee Burch, president; Mike Johns, secretary and chief of operations; Jeff Harper, Grayson Hart and Tim Nelson.

The main offices for the parent company and Advanced American Diving Services will remain in Oregon City.

M Cutter will continue to operate from Vancouver, Burgess said. The firm moors its floating equipment on the Columbia River at Vancouver's Columbia Business Center.

M Cutter's (correction – Advanced American's) fleet includes four crane barges, seven material barges, a dive barge and three tugboats, and about six smaller tugs and barges. Two of the crane barges hold tread-mounted crawler cranes, each (correction – one) with a 225-ton lifting capacity. Advanced American Diving Services won national awards for its work on the Eastbank Esplanade in Portland and navigation locks on the Lower Granite Dam. More recent projects include expanding a terminal for the Port of Vancouver and the first two shafts for the city of Portland's Big Pipe project, where crews dove to depths of as much as 120 feet.

The company also is installing a 3,000-foot long, 63-inch-diameter deep-water outfall pipe at Everett, Wash. The pipeline, which will discharge treated wastewater from the Kimberly Clark paper plant and the city of Everett, is being built in two phases.

In the first phase, about 2,000 feet of pipeline was assembled on shore, floated into the sound and installed as deep as 150 feet.

The second phase, which crosses over tidal flat, is being trenched and built from trestles.

Ray Hughey covers architecture, engineering and construction for the Daily Journal of Commerce. He can be reached by e-mail at rayh@djc-or.com or by phone at 503-221-3336.

...