• Age: 47
• Home­town: Med­i­na, Ohio
• Res­i­dence: Med­i­na, Ohio
• Fam­i­ly: Wife, Dawn, of 21 years and proud father of his daugh­ter, Meghan
• Hob­bies: Auto­mo­tive restora­tion, eques­tri­an and ATVs. “I recent­ly fin­ished a 1964 Chevro­let Chev­elle, it took me 6 years … now I’m work­ing on a 1977 Pon­ti­ac Grand Prix.”
• Expe­ri­ence in the Mar­itime Indus­try: 7 years
• Expe­ri­ence in Weld­ing: 15 years
• Pas­sion for Mar­itime: “I’ve always been fas­ci­nat­ed by tug­boats and ships, always … a friend gave me a tour of Great Lakes Ship­yard and I saw the labor­ers dry­dock a boat and I thought it was the coolest thing. I knew right away that I want­ed to work here.”

Aca­d­e­m­ic Insti­tu­tion: Polaris
Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion: Welding

Com­pa­ny: Great Lakes Ship­yard, an affil­i­ate of The Great Lakes Group
Title: Weld­ing and Fit­ting Leaderman
Tenure: 2013 – Present

“I left Great Lakes, for a few years, but looked for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to come back. It’s a great place to work, I want­ed to be in the yard again.”

Com­pa­ny: Amer­i­can Augers, Inc.
Title: Welder & Fitter
Tenure: 2011 – 2012

Com­pa­ny: Great Lakes Ship­yard, an affil­i­ate of The Great Lakes Group
Title: Welder & Fitter
Tenure: 2005 – 2010

Com­pa­ny: Affil­i­at­ed Met­al Indus­tries Inc.
Title: Labor­er, Welder & Fitter
Tenure: 1999 – 2004

• Met­al Inert Gas (MIG)/Gas Met­al Arc Weld­ing (GMAW)
• Tung­sten Inert Gas (TIG)/Gas Tung­sten Arc Weld­ing (GTAW)
• Stick Welding/Shielded Met­al Arc Weld­ing (SMAW)
• Flux-cored Arc Weld­ing (FCAW or FCA)
• Aluminum
• Stain­less Steel
• Mer­chant Mariner Doc­u­ment (MMD)

Tim is true crafts­man that is pas­sion­ate about his craft and accepts noth­ing less than per­fec­tion when work­ing in the ship­yard. His goal-ori­ent­ed approach makes him an excep­tion­al­ly effec­tive, moti­vat­ing and inspi­ra­tional lea­d­er­man and fore­man. With 15 years of expe­ri­ence in weld­ing, Tim’s breadth and depth of skills are impres­sive. Some of his skills include:

• Fit­ting
• Oxy-acety­lene Cut­ting, Weld­ing and Brazing
• SMAW Groove Welds
• SMAW Open V‑groove Welds
• SMAW Open-root Pipe Welds
• SMAW Ver­ti­cal Welding
• Plas­ma Arc Cutting
• GTAW (Gas Tung­sten Arc Weld­ing, TIG)
• GMAW (Gas Met­al Arc Weld­ing, MIG)
• Pipe Welding

Why work at The Great Lakes Group?

“I’m very for­tu­nate, many peo­ple have jobs that they don’t love. I am one of the few that can tru­ly say that they love their job. The atmos­phere here is great, I get along great with the exec­u­tive and oper­a­tions team in the main office, it’s like a fam­i­ly, I get along great with them. In the yard, it’s a friend­ship, brotherhood.”

“I got into the busi­ness because a friend gave me a tour of Great Lakes Ship­yard and I saw the labor­ers dry­dock a boat and I thought it was the coolest thing. I knew right away that I want­ed to work here.”

Why did you want to become a welder and fitter?

“I start­ed work­ing as a labor­er, but after I start­ed weld­ing, that was it. A friend showed me the ropes, but after that, it was ‘here, do it.’ I con­tin­ued to hone my craft, took class­es, got my cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in weld­ing and found a job that I tru­ly love.”

What are you working on?

“We are cre­at­ing a 300-foot float­ing break­wa­ter for Whiskey Island Mari­na, it will be fab­ri­cat­ed by bolt­ing two 150-foot cylin­dri­cal mod­ules. The float­ing break­wa­ter will be anchored to the bot­tom of Lake Erie in front of the Whiskey Island Mari­na. We will be down in mid-November.”

What is your role on the project?

“My goal is to make sure we are going by the blue­prints and every­thing is mea­sured up, make sure every­thing is on cue. It has to be on sched­ule and perfect.”

“At this point, we’ve done half of the bulk­heads or baf­fles, 75-foot. We start­ed off by com­bin­ing two steel drums, and con­tin­ued from there in sets of two. Now we are start­ing to join those sets to cre­ate one of the two 150-foot cylin­dri­cal mod­ules that will be com­bined for the 300-foot Whiskey Island Float­ing Break­wa­ter. Next week we will start the sec­ond half.”

“We are try­ing to keep the weld­ing in posi­tion, flat. We have the rollers for over­head weld­ing, I con­trol the speed of the roller and one of our welders is in a bas­ket mak­ing sure we get clean welds.”

“Once we are done with both 150-foot cylin­dri­cal mod­ules, we will blast and paint them and fill them with foam. After that, one of our tug­boats will haul it over to Whiskey Island Mari­na for installation.”

What defines this project for you?

Teamwork

“We work great as a team. We meet every morn­ing and set our goals for the day. I mon­i­tor the progress of our work through­out the day and make sure we accom­plish our goals.”

“We work close­ly with Jon Lei­vo, the Project Engi­neer. If I have a ques­tion on the prints, I can ask him, and he can get me an answer right away. Jon is in the yard every sin­gle day help­ing us, we work togeth­er great as a team.”

Safety

“We are very safe in the ship­yard. Every­one wears their hard hat, safe­ty glass­es and straps. We want to make sure every­one is safe, we look out for each oth­er like brothers.”

Efficiency

“We set our goal each morn­ing, and when we reach that, I know we are on sched­ule. If we reach our goal at noon, we don’t stop, we just keep going. That helps a lot because at the end of the week, the guys expect that we have more work to do, but I tell them that we already did that and are ahead of sched­ule. That makes every­one hap­py, and proud of their work. It puts them in a good mood and increas­es morale. We are a close team and that helps us be more effi­cient and effective.”

Craftsmanship & Quality 

“I have the best welders, our welds look real­ly good. Crafts­man­ship is way up there. It’s one of my pet peeves. It’s per­fec­tion or else. I’m a perfectionist.”