DESIGN✦ENGINEER✦PERMIT✦BUILD

The first site walk is not a sales call. Keith arrives at your waterfront with a measuring rod, a water-depth probe, and a notebook. He reads the soil line where the piles will land, measures the tidal swing from the seawall cap to the waterline, notes any seagrass presence within the dock footprint, and asks you the one question that drives everything: what do you want to be able to do from this structure in ten years? That conversation produces a structural sketch, a scope summary, and a preliminary material list — delivered within ten business days. No off-the-shelf dock template applies here. The Indian River Lagoon varies block by block. The sketch reflects the specific twenty feet of water in front of your property, not a generic layout pulled from a catalog.

The structural sketch becomes a sealed set of drawings. Pile diameter, spacing, embedment depth, beam sizing, load calculations for the boat lift if one is included — every dimension is calculated against the worst-case scenario the lagoon throws at a structure in Indian River County. Hurricane storm surge. A Category 3 wind load. Ten years of brackish water working against the fastener heads. Every drawing that leaves this office carries a Florida-licensed professional engineer's seal before it goes anywhere near a permit application. Material specifications are selected at this phase, not after the permit is issued — because the permit reviewer will ask, and the answer has to be specific. Composite decking or pressure-treated pine. Concrete piles or vinyl sheet pile. The right answer depends on water depth, sun exposure, tidal range, and the structure's function. We walk through those trade-offs with you before the drawings are finalized.

Four agencies, managed in parallel. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) Environmental Resource Permit is the primary application — the one that governs impacts to state waters, seagrass, and listed species habitat. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Section 10 or Section 404 authorization runs concurrently, depending on whether the work touches navigable waters of the United States. Indian River County Building reviews the structural drawings. The community's architectural review board or POA reviews the design aesthetics. Deckmasters prepares and submits all four. You sign the applications. That is your entire involvement in the permit process. Review timelines are honest: FDEP standard ERP review is 30 to 90 days under normal circumstances; projects in Aquatic Preserve waters or near documented seagrass beds take longer. We plan the construction calendar around the realistic timeline, not the optimistic one. RAI cycles — requests for additional information from the reviewing agency — are common and handled without additional client involvement.

Permits in hand, the crew mobilizes with the barge fitted for the water depth at your property. Pile-driving follows the engineered spacing on the sealed drawings — no field adjustments without engineering sign-off. Marine-grade fasteners throughout. Concrete mixed to the marine specification, not the residential general-purpose mix. Lumber rated for continuous salt-water exposure. Nothing is substituted to hit a schedule. The schedule is honest from the start about what the build actually takes. Progress communications go out before you have to ask: pile installation complete, decking begins, boat lift hardware arrives, final inspection scheduled. At handoff, you receive the as-built drawings, the permit close-out package from each agency, the warranty documentation, and a walkthrough with Keith. If anything has moved from the approved drawings during construction — a pile shifted six inches because of a subsurface obstruction, for example — it is documented in the as-builts and explained at the walkthrough. The project ends when you understand everything that is in the water.