Four Dredgers to Vie for $95 Million Army Corps Contract in Galveston

The Dutra Group, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock, Manson Construction and Weeks Marine will compete for orders under a firm-fixed-price hopper dredging deal running through July 31, 2031.

First Published: July 31, 2026, 1:40 PM ET

SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA — Four marine construction firms will compete for orders under a $95 million Army dredging contract covering the Galveston District, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a contract notice as announced on war.gov.

The firm-fixed-price award splits hopper dredging work among The Dutra Group, a San Rafael, California, marine contractor;Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. LLC, the Houston-based operator that ranks as the largest U.S. provider of dredging servi ces;Manson Construction Co.of Seattle, Washington; andWeeks Marine Inc.of Covington, Louisiana. Each order will be competed among the four, according to war.gov. Bids were solicited online, and the Corps received four offers.

Work locations and funding will be set with each order, and the estimated completion date is July 31, 2031, according to war.gov. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Galveston, Texas, is the contracting activity.

Hopper dredging keeps shipping channels open by scooping sediment from the seabed and storing it in onboard hoppers for disposal offshore or at designated sites. The Galveston District oversees navigation channels serving the Port of Houston, one of the busiest ports in the nation by tonnage. Silt buildup in those channels can force vessels to lighten loads or wait for tides, which raises costs across the supply chain.

The stakes fall unevenly across the four winners. A shared, multiple-award structure means none of the firms locks in guaranteed revenue. Each must keep bidding to capture task orders, which rewards companies that hold crews and vessels near the Gulf Coast. Shippers and port operators benefit from sustained channel depth, while taxpayers carry the cost of the maintenance program.

Federal dredging along the Gulf Coast has run for more than a century, tied to the growth of Texas ports. The Galveston District traces its navigation mission to work that deepened the Houston Ship Channel in the early 1900s, transforming an inland city into a major seaport. Maintenance dredging remains a recurring federal obligation because Gulf currents and river sediment refill channels each year.

The contract ceiling is modest against the broader federal dredging market. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock alone reported annual revenue above $500 million in recent years, dwarfing the single Galveston ceiling and underscoring that this award is one district’s slice of a national program.

Average readers rarely see dredging work, yet it shapes what they pay. Deeper channels let larger ships move fuel, grain and consumer goods through Gulf ports, and delays from shoaling ripple into freight rates and store prices.

This has happened before. The Corps routinely bundles Gulf dredging into multiple-award pools, and the same firms have competed for prior Galveston and Houston channel work across earlier contract cycles.

The next decision rests with the Galveston District contracting officers, who will issue individual task orders over the five-year term. A date for the first order has not been announced.

Galveston has weathered harder days than a routine dredging award. The Great Storm of 1900 struck the island on September 8, killing an estimated 8,000 people and ranking as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. The catastrophe pushed engineers to raise the city’s grade and build a seawall, and it accelerated the decision to develop the inland Houston Ship Channel that these dredgers now maintain.