The Navy marked completion of the Dry Dock 4 seismic retrofit at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on August 26, 2026. NAVFAC Northwest ran it as a $377.7 million task order with a Kiewit-Alberici joint venture, work starting November 3, 2025. That’s under ten months from notice to finish on a dock that stayed in the Navy’s docking plan throughout.
Project Scope
Crews worked around the clock, six days a week, installing structural anchors around the dock perimeter. Each anchor is twelve cables drilled through the dock walls, past the drainage layer and into native soil, then grouted and tensioned. Geotechnical testing and modeling let the team cut the anchor count from an estimated 1,000 to 600, a 40% reduction that drove the early finish. The retrofitted dock should now hold to less than six inches of lateral movement in a major seismic event, which is what keeps a docked warship from striking the walls.
Because the base scope landed five months early, NAVFAC applied additional funding to add work: reinforcing the quay walls either side of the caisson, anchoring around the pump well, bringing the pump well itself to seismic standards, and removing 500 decommissioned keel blocks to free laydown space. Total contract value rose to $517 million.
Why It Matters
The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program is the Navy’s attempt to fix dry docks built for a different fleet, sitting on soils nobody characterized to modern standards. Bremerton sits near active faulting, and a dock failure during an overhaul doesn’t just damage the dock, it strands a warship mid-availability.
The 40% anchor reduction is the finding worth carrying forward. It came from testing and modeling rather than from value-engineering the scope down, and it converted schedule into additional scope on the same contract. That’s the argument for front-loading geotechnical investigation on retrofits where the design assumption is conservative by necessity.
Project Team & Details
| Owner / Client | U.S. Navy / NAVFAC Northwest |
|---|
| General Contractor | Kiewit-Alberici Joint Venture |
|---|
| Status | Completed |
|---|
| Delivery Method | Design-Build |
|---|
| Funding Source | Public (Federal) |
|---|
