Profile Tim Beaver -- English Major Dives Into Marine Salvage Business

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- Name: Tim Beaver

- Age: 38

- Position: President, Global Diving & Salvage Inc.

- Goals: To provide reliable, high-quality and professional

service to the marine community.

- Quote: Small service companies ``are the ball bearings'' of

Seattle's maritime industry.

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The morning sun burned fog from Harbor Island. Inside a drab building, the American business dream was being turned into reality. But first Jackie Lewis needed a heavy box lifted.

``John, get in here and help me,'' Lewis, the office manager, said to the vice president. ``Don't get a hernia.''

Vice President John Graham obeyed.

The office was strewn with knick-knacks, gags sent by fax machines, a collection of hats, old diving equipment and photos of ships, including some vessels rolled into the water, victims of captain error or fate. In the bathroom, a curling iron hung from a hook.

This is not a typical office.

This is Global Diving & Salvage, a growing business. The guy in tennis shoes and blue jeans, who sits next to an old barber's chair, is President Tim Beaver, who graduated from the University of Utah in 1974, had no skills and no job, but wanted to live where he could have a boat. He found Seattle. It took three more months to find his first job.

Just as his office is unconventional in dress and style, so, too, is Beaver an unconventional president. One of three equal partners in the company, along with Graham and Vice President Thom Davis, Beaver says he is anything but a boss. He says his job is to build consensus.

Started in 1979 with six people, Global Diving has grown every year and today employs 20 people. More growth is expected. Beaver says one of the company's biggest challenges is simply managing growth. In addition to diving and salvage work, the company also sells pollution-control supplies and performs oil-spill cleanup service.

The company's oil-spill work grew substantially after the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in 1989; work on that job temporarily swelled Global's work force by 16 people. Since then, government and industry are putting more money into environmental protection.

Global has consciously sought to diversify its efforts, Beaver says. Diving and cleanup work each create peaks of employment and revenue. Working in several fields helps the company ``avoid the peaks and valleys of a specialized business,'' he says. Global also maintains a roster of qualified part-time workers who can be called when a given job demands a large work force.

According to a 1987 study by the Port of Seattle, Seattle's harbor directly employs 12,282. Public attention tends to focus on Sea-Land Services, American President Lines and other maritime giants, but Beaver points out that it's the small companies that keep everything functioning.

``We're the ball bearings,'' he says. ``We make the whole thing roll.''

As president of a small company, Beaver is constantly busy. One minute a valued customer is on the line. Another minute, a saleswoman from Yellow Pages is taking him out to lunch. When not pushing paper, Beaver is out on the water driving a tug boat owned by the company or underwater on a diving job.

After graduating with a degree in English, Beaver settled in Seattle and took his first job with Marine Oil and Pick-up Service, a company eventually wholly owned by Crowley Maritime. Beaver started as a laborer, but Crowley wanted employees to gain responsibility and Beaver was willing to study for his skimmer-operator license on his own time.

While with Crowley, Beaver handled oil spills mainly in Puget Sound but also in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, Texas and the Virgin Islands. When Crowley shifted its emphasis toward on-land hazardous waste cleanup, Beaver decided to leave. He spent 1980 working as a free-lancer for various harbor companies, unloading tank barges and delivering oil to anchored ships.

In 1981 he joined joined Global. By giving equipment he owned to the company, he acquired a partnership, one of seven at the time. He became president in 1989.

Graham says Beaver was made president for several reasons, including the fact that he and Davis thought Beaver would be more comfortable dealing with higher-ups in the corporate world, such as lawyers and insurance executives. ``He's a little more at ease and maybe a little less intimidated,'' Graham says.

While Davis tends to focus on environmental operations and Graham on diving, Beaver makes sure all jobs get completed on time and turn a profit for the company. Decisions have to be shared by all three of them, but Graham says the arrangement is working well. With Beaver as president, ``decisions are made a bit quicker,'' Graham says.

Beaver may be called the president, but there's no ego in how he approaches his job. ``I'm not a charismatic leader,'' he said. ``We operate as a partnership.''

Global's customers include Todd Shipyards, Manson Construction, Crowley, Sea-land Services and BP America.

Todd's dockmaster, Dave Anderson, has known Beaver since Beaver worked at Crowley. When they worked together, Beaver ``was hard-working, dedicated and fun. There was never a job too tough, day or night.''

Those qualities are especially helpful in the salvage or diving business, when the job needs someone willing to jump into something that smells bad or is cold. Global will ``do it, sunshine or ice,'' says Anderson, adding that Beaver gets in the water with everyone else.

Beaver has helped repair or refloat ships of all sorts.

When the Exxon Valdez rammed Bligh Reef, 11 million gallons of oil spilled, but 42 million gallons remained inside the ruptured tanker. J.H. ``Mickey'' Leitz & Associates was hired by Exxon to get the oil out of the tanker and bring the ship in for repairs. One of the subcontractors he turned to was Global, which helped pump oil from the tanker. Total salvage employment, including getting the ship to a yard in San Diego, hit a peak of 1,000 people.

``That was one helluva long, drawn-out affair,'' said Leitz, but he has praise for the Seattle company.

``They responded quickly, which is very important at a time like that, and they had good equipment. They did a very good job,'' he said.

Leitz and Beaver worked together on another job, floating a 110-foot yacht of Italian design that had sunk in a tight area at Lake Union. A crane couldn't be used at the location, so huge inflatable bags were secured to the sunken craft, which weighed more than 260 tons. Air pressure to the bags was individually controlled.

``His people did an outstanding job,'' Leitz said.

Global helped repair The Great Land, a ship owned by Totem Ocean Trailer Express , which was damaged July 6 when a valve accidently opened and flooded the engine room. With Beaver as the job supervisor, Global's divers descended into flooded interiors of the vessel, manually closed a 36-inch valve and brought in pumps to remove the water.

Beaver describes commercial diving as a job, not entertainment for thrill-seekers. He compares diving with airline piloting, where the professional's task is to minimize risks through planning. No one at global has had a diving-related injury, he says.

``The courage required to dive doesn't come from cheating death,'' said Beaver. ``It's getting up at 6 in the morning, it's 20 degrees out and you've got to jump off a dock and work in water for four or five hours. Doing that all winter long separates the men from the boys.''

Profile appears weekly in the Business Monday section of The Seattle Times.