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LAND AND SEA ARE NO MATCH FOR MILLER MARINE
MILLER MARINE
Since 1989 Miller Marine Inc. has been on and below deck at California’s famed San Diego waterfront. Ed Senter left his job to start his
own company. He asked coworkers to come with him and no one did. He opened Miller Marine as its first and only employee. Today, Miller Marine employs 100 plus men and women on the waterfront, and in their nearby 20,000sq.ft. manufacturing facility. Miller Marine is predominantly known for structural retrofit and repair on US Navy vessels, but their capabilities are far vaster. Pipe, sheet metal, milling, water jet, electrical, and UIT (Ultrasonic Impact Treatment) are just a few services available at Miller Marine. With over 150 welding certificates, this NAVSEA, ABS, ASME & AWS Standard Certified, ISO 9001-2015 compliant company can tackle anything the maritime and land-loving sectors can throw at it.
Steve Humphries is Miller Marine’s Production Manager. He works closely with both Vice President Seth Siraton and Contracts Estimating Manager Carlos Slaten. Most of the day-by day operations go through Steve, but the nature and complexity of their work demands a 100% team effort. Steve, like many of Miller Marine’s workers got his start on “fire watch,” a no-frills entry-level job,
similar to working as a welder’s assistant. He spent 20 years welding on ships before taking a decade long stint in the aerospace game. For the last six years he’s headed up the production team and is hands on with everything they do. “Nothing we do is easy work,” explains Steve. “It’s dangerous on the ships, dangerous in the yards, and it’s hard. We do a lot of structural; I mean a lot of structural work on these ships. Structural is anything from removing and replacing doors, cutting bulkheads out, and fabricating foundations.” A foundation is anything something sits on. The Navy doesn’t just put an electrical cabinet on the deck of the ship. It is bolted to the foundation, and the foundation is welded to the ship. Ship repairs have more guidelines, parameters and overviews to follow than the original builder’s spec. Miller Marine has a job right now with 366 pages of specs the government mandates they follow. “We don’t make a 1000 of a single part,” details Steve. “We custom make everything. Even if the ships are identical on paper, they never are when it comes to doing the retrofits. Drawings are different from ship to ship and never the same. A lot of times we roll out to do measurements and the drawings are nowhere near being a match because the boat has undergone multiple changes in the last 40 years.” Miller
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CNC WEST August/September 2021
Article & Photos by Sean Buur