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.
Compliance and trade execution
Customs and import/export compliance, tariff exposure, Jones Act and coastwise questions, and USCG and OPA 90 requirements, written into procedures your team uses every day. Handled well, compliance helps win work.
Operations and project cargo
Standing up or tightening agency, terminal, shore-base and vessel operations: procedures, safety, staffing and vendors. 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.
Compliance and transactional support
Handled directly or through Offshore Compliance Services:
- 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 clarkbuffam@aol.com.