Company Profile: Specialty Diving Services

We see builders all over Rhode Island working on roads, bridges and buildings. However, there is another type of builder we never see – those working in the depths of rivers, lakes, bays and the open ocean.

Nick Tanionos is CEO of Specialty Diving Services, an underwater construction company located at the Quonset Port and Commerce Park, North Kingstown, in the heart of Narragansett Bay.

“We do anything a construction worker would do on land, but underwater,” says Nick.

His team was responsible for building key components of the Block Island Wind Farm which started spinning in 2016. Underwater builders and welders worked on the foundations, set up special buoys for data collection, and built the underwater structures on Block Island to accept the incoming undersea transmission cables. His company also built a 2,500 square foot maintenance facility on his property to accommodate components of the Block Island Wind Farm project and potential future projects.

Nick’s career began at the University of Rhode Island where he was part of a research diving program that studied the movement of fish. He worked on URI’s 230-foot research vessel, Endeavor, and took trips north of the Arctic Circle. In 1986, Nick started Specialty Diving Services out of a garage in North Kingstown and later moved his growing company to the Quonset Port and Commerce Park in 1992.

Today, the company leases a pier in the port and owns five acres of property with 26,000 square feet of building space, as well as a fleet of barges, cranes and special purpose marine support equipment. His company employs 30 people including 12 divers, most of whom are based in Rhode Island. Much of his company’s work comes from projects such as rehabilitating dams, pipelines, undersea cables, bridges, ports and other marine-related projects.

The proposed Revolution Wind Farm, with 50 wind turbines planned 15 miles southeast of Rhode Island’s coast, is a signal to Nick that the offshore wind industry is growing quickly.

“It’s going to be a huge plus for the State,” says Nick. “It will generate jobs and a lot of people in the supply chain will be positively impacted.”

Nick plans to hire more employees to accommodate the growing industry. Right now, his company is working on the Quonset Port North Pier 2 Extension, planned as part of the $70 million port infrastructure improvements bond measure passed in 2016. The Revolution Wind project, if approved, will use Rhode Island ports such as Quonset, as staging areas.

When we asked Nick about what he thinks about working in Rhode Island, he said, “I love the quality of life here. It’s great. Rhode Island is a good central location for our business in New England.