• Age: 28
• Home­town: Men­tor, Ohio
• Res­i­dence: Cleve­land, Ohio
• Fam­i­ly: Wife, Liz, of 3 years and their dog, Ozzie
• Hob­bies: Boat­ing, ski­ing and exercising
• Expe­ri­ence in the Mar­itime Indus­try: 5 years
• Pas­sion for Mar­itime: “Since I was 7 years-old”

Aca­d­e­m­ic Insti­tu­tion: Webb Insti­tute
Degree: Bach­e­lor of Naval Archi­tec­ture and Marine Engineering

Aca­d­e­m­ic Insti­tu­tion: Stevens Insti­tute of Technology
Degree: Mas­ter of Ocean Engineering

Com­pa­ny: Great Lakes Ship­yard, an affil­i­ate of The Great Lakes Group
Title: Project Engineer
Tenure: 2012 – Present

Com­pa­ny: Netsco
Title: Naval Architect
Tenure: 2008 – 2012

• Licensed Engi­neer: State of Ohio
• Marine Trav­elift Cer­ti­fied Operator

Jon is an excel­lent prob­lem solver that can pull from his edu­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence to design unique solu­tions for any chal­lenge. Some of his skills include:

• Design
• Hydrodynamics
• Marine Engineering
• Naval Architecture
• Resis­tance and Propulsion
• Project Management
• Resis­tance & Propulsion
• Struc­tures & Electrical
• Sys­tems Design

Why work at The Great Lakes Group?

“Before, I sat at a desk and designed, but I want­ed to be out in the yard, boots on the ground, solv­ing prob­lems. At Great Lakes, I get to do that every day. The com­pa­ny is real­ly grow­ing; they’ve come a long way in a short time, and I want­ed to be a part of that growth. I made the move to The Great Lakes Group because there’s a lot of poten­tial, the sky is the limit.”

Why did you want to become an engineer?

“I’ve always seen myself as an engi­neer, I was great at math … I grew up boat­ing, on the water … and had an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend Webb Insti­tute with a full schol­ar­ship, so I inter­viewed with the Pres­i­dent of the insti­tute and was accept­ed as one of 26 stu­dents in the largest grad­u­at­ing class at that time.”

“Grow­ing up, my par­ents had a boat in Fair­port, and every week­end, I would see at least 1–2 ore boats unload­ing … then when I began my career, I was able to see the same boats I saw as a kid, but in the office on paper, and even­tu­al­ly on the water.”

“What I real­ly like about my job is get­ting the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work on things that would be a hob­by otherwise.”

What are you working on?

“The old break­wa­ter at the Whiskey Island Mari­na was dam­aged dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Sandy. It broke free dur­ing the hur­ri­cane, washed ashore and was dam­aged. Whiskey Island Mari­na was able to make minor repairs after the hur­ri­cane to serve as a stop­gap mea­sure, how­ev­er they rec­og­nized that they need­ed a solu­tion instead of a fix. The pre­vi­ous break­wa­ter was designed in 50-foot sec­tions that were bolt­ed togeth­er. Whiskey Island Mari­na informed us that the bolt­ing points were a source of fail­ure because the bolts would stretch and nuts would loosen, so they had to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor the break­wa­ter. They want­ed an improve­ment on the pre­vi­ous break­wa­ter; so, as a team, we pro­posed and designed a new float­ing break­wa­ter with two 150-foot cylin­dri­cal mod­ules that would join to cre­ate the over­all 300-foot long, 10-foot float­ing break­wa­ter, instead of the old­er break­wa­ter that was cre­at­ed with mul­ti­ple 50-foot sections.”

“We were in a unique posi­tion to deliv­er a supe­ri­or prod­uct for Whiskey Island because we can launch the float­ing break­wa­ter with our Marine Trav­elift and tow it with our tug­boats, where­as our com­peti­tors would have had to take it by truck. Now, boats in the Whiskey Island Mari­na will be safe from the waves of the harbor.”

What is your role on the project?

“I’ve been work­ing very close­ly with the team at Whiskey Island to devel­op a design that pro­tects Whiskey Island Mari­na from the Cleve­land Lake­front inner har­bor. I get out into the yard dai­ly to mon­i­tor the progress of the project and ensure that we get all of the mate­r­i­al on a time­ly basis, so that we meet mile­stones and there are QA check­points so that every­thing works as planned.

“Right now, we are installing bulk­heads into each of the steel drums that will make up the cylin­dri­cal mod­ules. This helps retain the shape of the cylin­ders and pro­vides strength, which will be an advance­ment over the old­er break­wa­ter. Then we will blast it, paint it and install the flota­tion foam. After we are done fab­ri­cat­ing the break­wa­ter, we will install it at Whiskey Island Mari­na, con­nect­ing new anchor points and rig­ging under water.”

What defines this project for you?

Teamwork

“Mike Satanek, David Dud­ley, the Whiskey Island man­age­ment team and I col­lab­o­rat­ed on the design of the float­ing break­wa­ter, and David and I work togeth­er every day on project man­age­ment and production.”

Safety & Quality

“Mike Satanek makes sure every­one work­ing on the project is safe but also makes sure that every­thing meets our qual­i­ty stan­dards in the shipyard.”

“Every day I’m in the yard, meet­ing with Tim Grimes, the Weld­ing and Fit­ting Lea­d­er­man, to mon­i­tor weld qual­i­ty. We want good clean welds.”

Efficiency

“It’s impor­tant that we fol­low our pro­duc­tion sched­ule and every­thing is com­plet­ed in a time­ly man­ner, but still with great quality.”