Dry Dock 8 Modernization, Norfolk Naval Shipyard

Dry Dock 8 is the carrier dock at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and the Navy is rebuilding it to take Gerald R. Ford-class carriers. It’s expected to become the first public shipyard dry dock able to do that work. The yard broke ground in February 2023 on a renovation reported at more than $300 million, plus roughly $90 million to repair the two adjacent berths.

You can’t simply replace a working dry dock, and that’s the whole engineering problem. Crews are upgrading the saltwater flooding and dewatering systems to a carrier’s capacity and flow demand, repairing the caisson and the dewatering pumps, and improving the ground behind dock walls that are more than a century old, while the yard keeps running carrier and submarine availabilities alongside.

Project Scope

Saltwater system upgrade under project P-678, caisson repair, dewatering pump repair, ground improvement behind the dock walls, and repairs to two adjacent berths. MEB General Contractors of Chesapeake, Virginia holds the P-678 saltwater system work and a separate $9,032,255 firm-fixed-price dock certification maintenance repair contract. Keller North America performed ground improvement. Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Atlantic is the contracting agency.

The P-678 package was reported complete in 2025, and the overall renovation has been reported as running ahead of schedule toward a 2027 completion.

Why It Matters

The work sits under the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, the Navy’s twenty-year effort to modernize four public shipyards it has itself described as facing an age crisis. Norfolk was founded in 1767 and is the oldest continuously operating shipyard in the country, which is exactly the problem: the infrastructure predates the ships it has to service.

Ford-class capability at a public yard changes the maintenance math for the carrier fleet. That work currently concentrates at a small number of facilities, and a dock that can take the newest carriers without competing for a private yard’s schedule is capacity the Navy owns outright.

Project Team & Details