It was a set of Legos and days spent at the beach that propelled Hannah to pursue her lifelong dream—building structures and working near the water. In 8th grade, she told her friends that she wanted to create a position called the “Secretary of the Coast,” where her duties entailed checking America’s beaches to ensure they were in tip-top shape. When Hannah was 16 years old, she learned about Ocean Engineering through her father and was inspired to pursue it as a vocation.
After high school, Hannah enrolled in the Ocean Engineering program at Texas A&M University (TAMU). During her freshman year at TAMU, Hannah came across a Manson college recruiting booth at a career fair where she discovered the niche industry of marine construction. With a burning desire to fulfill her dream of working on the water, Hannah participated in two internships at Manson. ”I did two internships with Manson during my sophomore and junior years from 2013 to 2014,” Hannah says. “The first was in Golden Meadow, Louisiana, where I helped the project team with restoring a levee, and the second was on the hopper dredge BAYPORT for the first West Coast Hopper contract."
When the opportunity came, she joined the company as a field engineer in 2016. Reaching her six-year milestone with Manson, she now holds the role of quality control engineer after four years of field engineer work.
Hannah’s day-to-day tasks include completing on-site quality checks, reviewing daily construction records, and ensuring that the work is both compliant and up to Manson standards. Her role keeps her on her toes depending on the project. “One day I can be inspecting rebar and the next day I could be taking tension readings in steel articulating tie rods,” Hannah says. “I keep lots of checklists and records, and my work overlaps a lot of production tracking.”
Reflecting on her days as a bright-eyed engineering student to her role as a quality control engineer at Manson, Hannah hopes to spread some of her knowledge to students on the engineering path. “My advice for current students is for them to focus on finding the industry they want to get into,” Hannah explains. “If you think a career working on a ship is ideal, find the path that will set you on that course.”
In her six years with Manson, Hannah still harbors that same excitement she had as an intern.
”Manson’s roots as a family-owned company—and now an employee-owned company—are what makes this company different from the rest,” Hannah says. “We have a deep history of taking care of people, doing the right thing, and finding a better way.”
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