His vision is centered around the waterways of Ketchikan, an island community in Southeast Alaska that is nearer to Seattle than Anchorage.

Ward's vision is one step closer to becoming reality. On June 6, the state Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development issued an invitation to bid on building a 2,500 long-ton floating dry dock. It will be an addition to the current 9,600 long-ton dry dock.

"Right now, once we get one ship in here, we're done," said Ward, the director of shipyard development for the Alaska Ship and Dry Dock Inc., the shipyard's operator. "To be viable, we need to do large and small vessels."

At a cost of between $6 million and $9 million, the new dock will be a land-level transfer facility capable of transporting vessels using rail-mounted trolleys to covered work stations on land for maintenance. It may also be used to launch newly built ships into the water.

The contract, scheduled to be awarded in July, will only consist of the dry dock itself. Separate contracts will be issued for a submergence basin, docking grids and the trolley system.

"The second ship lift will improve the viability of the yard," said Ron Miller, executive director of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state-run economic development corporation that owns the yard. "The state originally built an incomplete yard. The vision is to complete that yard."

Construction on the new dry dock is expected to be completed by August 2006, according to the bid proposal.

The Ketchikan shipyard's history is a rolling sea of controversy and poor oversight.

It was originally built to perform wintertime routine maintenance on the Alaska Marine Highway System's fleet of ferries.

At least one study, conducted in 1976, had determined that the state ferry system's market structure did not justify building a major shipyard in Ketchikan, according to a 1990 Legislative Budget and Audit Committee report.

By 1978, however, the state Legislature appropriated $1 million to acquire a site, and provided additional appropriations and supplemental funds for the completion of the $38 million shipyard. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities would be the owner.

Lawmakers had hoped that the facility would become an economic engine for Ketchikan. The initial construction would be subsidized by the state and the shipyard would later generate employment and income for the state's economy, according to the report.

Construction on the shipyard began in 1982, and soon had to be scaled down due to higher-than-anticipated costs, the 1990 report said. The 9,600 long-ton dry dock, primarily used for the state ferries, was completed in 1987.

Beginning January 1987, the operation and management of the shipyard fell to the city of Ketchikan. In March that year, the city entered into a use agreement with Ketchikan Welding Works Inc. to operate the facility. That company failed soon afterward.

The city signed an operating agreement in July 1988 with Ketchikan Shipyard Inc., which in 1989 sold to Seley Corp. It was to be a winter-operated facility. It too failed.

At the time, many said politics played too big a role for the operations to be successful. The DOT commissioner had the option whether to send ferries for maintenance and repairs to Ketchikan or to other Pacific Northwest shipyards. Others said the shipyard simply couldn't do the work as well as the Washington and Oregon yards.

The 1990 audit committee report was tasked to determine if the shipyard was doing repair and maintenance work on the state's ferries in a way that was faster and more cost-effective than sending the vessels Outside. The committee was also asked to determine if the state was satisfied with the shipyard's work.

Bottom line was on all counts was a resounding no.

Shortly after the report was released, the shipyard shut down for two years.

In November 1993, the transportation department awarded a contract to the Alaska Ship and Dry Dock to reopen the facility and manage Alaska Marine Highway overhaul projects. In 1997, ownership of the shipyard was transferred to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.

The shipyard is now a year-round operation, working on commercial vessels and personal watercraft in addition to the state's ferries.

It started with 25 employees, and earned $2.5 million in revenues in its first full year of operations, Ward said. In 2004, it saw $16 million in gross revenues, and employs about 80 year-round workers.

Alaska Ship and Dry Dock has not gone without its own struggles, but today's political environment seems to be more supportive of the idea of employing the local talent, Ward said.

Alaska Ship and AIDEA are working with the state's congressional delegation seeking federal grants and other funding to further improve the yard. While the yard has come a long way, much still needs to happen for Ward's vision to happen.

"(The shipyard) is doing OK," AIDEA's Miller said. "Alaska Ship and Dry Dock has done a good job of keeping it going. We have some profit sharing mechanisms in the operational agreement once certain benchmarks are reached. We're confident that they can reach those benchmarks soon."

To reach those levels, several things need to happen, and soon, both Miller and Ward said.

The Alaska state ferry M/V Malaspina receives work at Alaska Ship and Dry Dock Inc. in Ketchikan. An expansion of the facility will allow more ships to be worked on at the same time. PHOTO/Melissa Campbell/AJOC

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough has already signed a similar agreement, Miller said. The city is expected to discuss the proposal during its July 7 meeting.

"It's critical that the local community support the project," he said.

Once that's done, Alaska Ship and AIDEA plans to finally sign off on a long-term operating agreement. It's a 10-year agreement, with the option to extend 10 years two times.

"We need more than a three-year or a year-to-year lease," Ward said. "Right now we're doing damn-near month to month contracts. You can't leverage financing with anything less than a 30-year lease. It offers stability. We need to assure our customers that we're going to be here."

Once the shipyard can show that stability, it will be able to secure financing and have a better opportunity to get more federal grants. Then the ships will come, Ward said.

Expanding the shipyard will bring other support business to the area, Ward said. Crews can build more ships. With shipbuilding comes shops offering machine, paint and metal work. With plentiful repair facilities, ship owners will eventually be more inclined to use Alaska as a homeport.

"Alaska has the opportunity to make a facility in Alaska that can receive vessels when they are displaced from Puget Sound," Ward said. "If we don't do it now, other areas will."

An ice-free port nestled in a protected harbor, Ketchikan is the perfect location for such an enterprise, Ward said.

He estimates the shipyard will have more than 300 full-time employees once the new dock and its support facilities are completed. And each shipbuilding job creates five shore-side jobs.

"As the demand increases, the economy will grow, business will start coming in to support the shipbuilding," Ward said.

Alaska Ship is already working to teach the locals the basics of shipyard work.

The company recently got involved with the National Shipbuilding Research Program, which was created by shipyards around the country to find ways to be more competitive for their national security customers.

It is working with the University of Alaska offering classes on shipyard work.

Alaska Ship has also built its business plan around the Northern European shipbuilding model, which focuses on cross training employees.

"Having multiple skills is important so that the same guys stay employed as the jobs change," Ward said. "With this, we have a resident, stable work force. We're not trying to go global. We're staying in our own backyard."