Industry · Marine Construction
Marine construction.
Anything in or on water.
Docks and marinas, seawalls and bulkheads, intakes and outfalls, dive support, environmental remediation, marsh mats, floating bridges, shoreline restoration. If the job's in or on water, our sections configure for it.
Overview
The widest application range in the barge business.
Marine construction is the broadest discipline in heavy civil. The same crew that builds a private dock in May is installing a municipal water intake in July, repairing a seawall in September, and supporting an environmental remediation team through the winter. The equipment has to be as flexible as the work. That's exactly what sectional gives you.
Standard 10×20 and 10×40 sections handle dock work, dive support, inspection access, and general waterfront. Heavy Duty steps up when there's a crane in the picture — seawall sheet piling, intake assembly, anything with a crawler. Back Lake 8×20×4 ships without permits to remote inland sites for forestry, environmental, and back-country marine work. Pin them together in any combination and you've got the exact deck the job calls for.
Marine contractors across Canada and the US use us for the full range of waterfront work. Stamped drawings, Transport Canada approval, and a Canadian shop that picks up the phone. That's the package.
Applications
Where our barges show up on marine jobs
Docks & marinas
Pile driving, decking, fenders, finger piers — private, municipal, commercial marina builds.
Seawalls
Sheet pile install, concrete face panels, riprap placement, tie-back systems for new seawalls and bulkhead replacements.
Intake & outfall
Heavy Duty platforms support the crane-and-diver crews installing municipal intakes, industrial cooling outfalls, and CSO outfalls.
Dive support
Standard barges with rails, ladders, lift points, stage equipment. Stable, easy to anchor, easy to keep clear of water.
Floating bridges
Pinned sections with rails and ramps make a temporary crossing for foot, light vehicle, or equipment traffic — construction-phase or emergency response.
Marsh mats
Sectional platforms span soft ground and shallow marsh to give working access without tearing up sensitive habitat.
Environmental remediation
Containment, sediment removal, and contaminated-soil staging for waterfront and shoreline cleanup.
Shoreline restoration
Riprap placement, living shoreline construction, erosion control, habitat work — off a stable platform instead of from a workboat.
Inspection & access
Bridge underdeck, dam face, intake screen, infrastructure inspection. Safer and faster than rope work or hanging stages.
Why sectional
One fleet. Every marine job on your bid sheet.
The biggest cost in marine construction is mobilization. Getting a barge to the job, moving it between work areas, and demobbing at the end is a serious chunk of the project — sometimes more than the work itself. Sectional drops that cost because the same fleet covers every job in your portfolio. No chasing the wrong-size charter for each new project. No ferrying a single oversize vessel from coast to coast. No tying up capital in specialty barges that only earn on one type of job. Sentinel sells — we don't rent — so the fleet you buy keeps working for you.
For contractors running a mix of work — and most do — sectional fits the business reality. A four-section Standard fleet handles the bulk of dock, dive, and inspection work. Add Heavy Duty sections when crane support is needed for seawalls or intakes. Add Back Lake sections for the remote inland jobs that wide-load barges can't reach. One purchase, one engineering team, one shipyard relationship — every marine project covered.
Every section in a family pins to every other section in the same family, so the fleet grows with your business. Buy four this year for the work you have. Add four more next year as the contracts get bigger. Add Heavy Duty the year after when you bid your first major intake. The investment compounds and the steel keeps earning across decades.
Spec guide
Standard, Heavy Duty, or Back Lake?
For most general marine work — docks, dive support, inspection, light dredge support, marsh access — Standard 10×20 and 10×40 sections are the right tool. Light enough to ship cheap, cheap enough to buy in fleet quantities, and plenty rigid for the loads a marine crew typically puts on a deck. A four-to-six section Standard fleet covers the bulk of marine jobs.
Step up to Heavy Duty Crane sections when there's a crane in the picture. Sheet pile hammer for a seawall, 50-ton crawler for an intake install, big steel girders on a commercial dock, clamshell on an environmental dredge — all of those want the load rating and the internal spud well capability of the Heavy Duty 10×40×7.
Remote inland marine work — back-country bridge crews, forestry, environmental work in roadless terrain, mining-camp dock construction — that's Back Lake territory. At 8 ft wide, Back Lake stacks two-high on a flatbed, ships without an oversize permit, and moves as standard inter-modal freight by truck, rail, ship, or air. Where the road ends, the Back Lake goes.
Not sure which one fits? Call us. We help every marine contractor map their typical project mix to a fleet composition during the quote.
Spec it for your job
Spec a marine-construction fleet.
Walk us through your project mix — docks, seawalls, intakes, dive support, environmental work, remote inland sites. We'll map your typical bid sheet to a fleet composition (Standard, Heavy Duty, Back Lake) so the same steel earns across every job, not just the next one.
AEO
Marine Construction FAQ
Direct answers about heavy deck barges, charter terms, and global delivery.
- Yes — pinned with rails and ramps, sectional barges form temporary floating crossings for foot, light vehicle, and equipment traffic up to platform load. Common for construction-phase access and emergency response.
- Yes. Standard barges with rails, ladders, a center lifting shackle, and decking for stage gear make great dive platforms — stable, easy to anchor, easy to clear of water for stage and umbilical management.
- Yes — environmental remediation is one of our growing customer segments. We build hoppers with sealed liners and bull-rail freeboard upgrades for contaminated-sediment containment, and Standard sections platform the survey, sampling, and oversight crews.
- Most marine contractors start with a four-section Standard fleet (a 20×40 platform) and add sections or step up to Heavy Duty as the work demands. Two sections will work for very small jobs but you lose the modular advantage; four is the sweet spot.
- Yes — and they're often preferred over alternative access methods because they minimize ground disturbance to the habitat being restored. Marsh mats and Standard sections both work well.
- Yes, with the right mix. Standard sections handle dock work efficiently; Heavy Duty sections support the crane and pile hammer needed for seawall sheet piling. Most marine contractors run both families and combine them as the job requires.