Knight Const. & Supply, Inc.

Knight Const. & Supply has worked on dams in the Columbia, Snake and Missouri river systems since 1968, when Jim and Fern Knight founded the company in Deer Park, Washington. The firm is a heavy industrial contractor and fabricator rather than a general builder, and most of its work involves rebuilding or maintaining equipment inside operating facilities: spillway gates, penstocks, powerhouse machinery, mine and plant maintenance, fire protection systems and crane modernization. It keeps AWS D1.1 and D1.5 certified welders and NCCCO certified crane operators on staff, along with a specialty fabrication shop. In February 2026 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Seattle District awarded Knight a $20.4 million contract to replace all eleven original 1955 spillway gates at Albeni Falls Dam in Oldtown, Idaho. Earlier hydroelectric work includes Wanapum Dam, Ice Harbor Dam, Hills Creek Spillway in Oregon and Lucky Peak Dam.

Two claims on Knight’s own site carry more weight with a federal contracting officer than any capability statement: the company says it has never been assessed liquidated damages, and has never been involved in litigation on a construction contract. On dam work, where shutdown windows are fixed by water management schedules and a missed date has downstream consequences, that is the record that gets a contractor short-listed.

The trade mix behind it is specific. The company employs millwrights, welders certified to AWS D1.1, AWS D1.5 and ASME Section IX, pipefitters, carpenters, power equipment operators, electricians, truck drivers and laborers, with NCCCO-certified crane operators. Most of the equipment is owned rather than rented, including several cranes topping out at a 140-ton crawler. In-house engineers, CAD drafters and estimators support the field.

The history explains the specialisation. Jim and Fern Knight started the company in 1968 building pole buildings and commercial structures. In 1983 Jim bonded his first federal project and took his sons and a crew to Alaska to clear 63 miles of the Alaska-Yukon border, with Fern running the office as treasurer through the season. The first hydroelectric job came in 1986, hydraulic steel structure modifications at Lucky Peak Dam for the Walla Walla district of the Corps of Engineers. Doug Knight has been president since 2000, with Dave Knight as vice president; the two took full ownership in 2018 when Ken Knight retired after 35 years as superintendent on the company’s major projects.

Clients on the river systems are the Corps of Engineers, public utility districts, the Bureau of Reclamation and US Fish and Wildlife. Named project work includes tainter gate structural upgrades and hoist replacement at Hills Creek Spillway, tainter gate painting and trunnion bearing replacement at Wanapum Dam, navigation lock gate hoist and controls upgrades at Ice Harbor Dam, miter gate pintle heel replacement at Little Goose, a design-build tainter gate replacement at Alcoa, and downstream channel remediation at Long Lake Dam. Avista lists the firm among its preferred contractors for gate work on its hydro system.

The shop and office are at 2601 E. 6th Street in Deer Park. The company’s SAM unique entity ID is S6HKH3KV35N3 and its CAGE code is 1GP13.