Working together
Partnerships with owners and their teams
Engagements with owners of small maritime and maritime-adjacent businesses. The aim is a team that can compete with companies many times its size, and keep doing it after the engagement ends.
Want to talk about your business and your team?
How an engagement works
- Get inside the business. Time with the owner and the team, on the floor and in the numbers, to see how work really gets done and where it stalls.
- Build the team and the system. Hire or promote into the key seats, train people, and put in the procedures, compliance and tools they need. Your people do the work, and I work next to them.
- Hand it over. Once the team runs it on its own, I step back. The people, the procedures and the know-how stay with you.
Areas of partnership
Team building and leadership
Org design for where the company is going, hiring and promoting into the key seats, onboarding and training, and coaching the managers who will run things after the engagement ends.
Capital, family business and special situations
Preparing to raise capital or recapitalize, including vessel finance under Jones Act ownership rules. Succession and governance in family and owner-led companies. For a business under pressure, such as a lost contract, a cash squeeze or a stalled project, a straight read on the numbers and a plan to stabilize, restructure or sell.
Trade setup and execution
For physical commodity traders, importers and exporters: the supply chain, the compliance plan, the subcontracts and the day-to-day running of trades, set up with your team. See below.
Operations and project cargo
Standing up or tightening agency, terminal, shore-base and vessel operations: procedures, safety, staffing and vendors, with Jones Act, coastwise, USCG and OPA 90 requirements written in. Planning for heavy, oversized and time-critical cargo.
Government contracting
Getting ready to bid on federal and defense logistics work, then performing and reporting on it.
Software and agentic workflows
Choosing, specifying or building the tools that let a small team carry a big workload, from operations software like usebase.io, which Digital Operating Solutions brought to market, to AI workflows where the software proposes and a person confirms.
Trade setup and execution
Physical commodity traders, importers and exporters often win the deal first and then have to build everything behind it: the route, the paperwork, the compliance and the companies that will actually move the cargo. Large trading houses have whole departments for this. A small trading desk usually has a few people and a deadline. We set it up together, working with your team, so a small desk can run trades with the same discipline as the big houses and punch above its weight.
Map the physical flow
- Follow the cargo from origin to buyer: who loads it, who holds it, where it changes hands and where it can get stuck.
- Pick the Incoterms that fit the deal, and be clear on where title and risk pass and who pays for what along the way.
- Structure the trade lane: bulk, breakbulk, container or project cargo, inland moves, port handling, and storage or warehousing.
- Set up inspection and surveyors for quantity and quality at load and discharge, so the numbers at both ends can be trusted.
Build the compliance plan
- Classification, valuation and country of origin, settled before the first shipment.
- Licences and permits the product or the destination needs.
- Sanctions and denied-party screening for buyers, sellers, vessels and service providers.
- Recordkeeping that holds up to an audit, and the customs bonds the trade needs.
- Duty and tariff exposure priced into the deal, with drawback, foreign-trade zone and in-bond options looked at where they fit.
Get the documents right
- One document flow for bills of lading, commercial invoices, packing lists, certificates of origin and inspection certificates.
- Documents that match the letter of credit or payment terms, so cargo and payment move together and a bank doesn't hold up a clean shipment over a typo.
- A named owner and a deadline for every document.
Contract the right subcontractors
- Choose carriers, forwarders, customs brokers, ship agents, terminals, surveyors and truckers that fit the cargo, the volume and the route.
- Contracts with clear scopes, service levels and KPIs, and liability and claims terms that match the risk you actually carry.
- A simple way to review performance and change providers when one stops delivering.
Run the trade
- Nominations, scheduling, and vessel and cargo coordination from fixture to discharge.
- Demurrage and laytime watched every day, with the sale contract and the charter lined up so you aren't paying for someone else's delay.
- Claims for shortage, damage or delay prepared with the evidence already in hand.
Hand it over
- A written playbook for each lane: steps, documents, contacts, checklists and what to do when something goes wrong.
- A team trained to run it day to day, so the owner can step back from every shipment and get back to doing deals.
Compliance and transactional support
Handled directly or through Offshore Compliance Services, which also takes on vessel and asset export, government bids and early-stage maritime ideas:
- Customs brokerage for imports, exports, ship spares and offshore work.
- Tariffs and trade measures: what applies to your cargo and what it costs.
- Jones Act and coastwise questions: what the rules mean for your operation.
- USCG and OPA 90 requirements for vessels working U.S. waters.
- Crew and workforce: visas, mariner credentials and manning plans.
- Permits and project management to keep approvals and execution on schedule.
More on the project page, and in articles on these topics.
Ready to start? Email [email protected].