Crane and Rigging Exam Prep Across Duval County

JAXPORT: three terminals, different lifting problems

The port authority works cargo at Blount Island, Dames Point and Talleyrand. The federal harbor deepening reached Blount Island in 2022, taking roughly 11 miles of channel from 40 to 47 feet and adding a turning basin, a $420 million effort that lets larger container ships call. Two new 50-gauge ship-to-shore cranes arrived at Blount Island in pieces in June 2025, were assembled on the dock, and moved their first containers in January 2026. Each is rated for up to 65 long tons under the spreader and 75 long tons in heavy-lift mode, with 115 feet of lift height. A third unit was delivered to Talleyrand in December 2025.

Container cranes on a working wharf fall under OSHA's marine terminal rules rather than the construction crane standard. The jobs around them are a different story. Assembling a ship-to-shore crane, rebuilding a berth, setting transformer and switchgear packages, or rigging out-of-gauge project cargo with a hydraulic or crawler crane is often construction or maintenance work where Subpart CC certification and qualified riggers come into play.

Navy work at NAS Jacksonville and Mayport

Fleet Readiness Center Southeast at NAS Jacksonville describes itself as the largest maintenance, repair and overhaul provider in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia, with roughly 5,000 civilian, military and contract workers. Its facilities keep getting rebuilt: Hangar 101, about 93,000 square feet, reopened in early 2023 with a new roof, sprinkler, HVAC and electrical systems. The base's Type II hangar, finished in 2009 at 277,000 square feet, was billed by its builder as the Navy's largest single hangar.

Naval Station Mayport, at the mouth of the St. Johns River, generates a steady run of waterfront contracts. Wharf Bravo had its steel sheet-pile bulkhead replaced under a 2016 contract worth more than $23 million, and a $16.5 million task order in 2020 covered the destroyer slip's south quay wall. That kind of work means pile driving from barges and crawler cranes on fresh fill, plus contractors who expect badging, documented qualifications and tight lift plans.

A new power plant on the Northside

In August 2025 the JEA board voted to build a combined-cycle natural gas plant on 40 acres of the former St. Johns River Power Park site, sized at up to 675 megawatts with a stated cost of $1.57 billion. The city's planning commission granted the zoning exception that November. JEA plans to retire Northside Unit 3 by 2031 and aims to bring the new plant online in late 2031 or early 2032.

If that schedule holds, the late 2020s will bring turbine, heat-recovery steam generator and structural steel erection near the river, the kind of job where large crawlers, assist cranes, engineered rigging and dedicated signal persons all show up on the same site.

Matching Duval jobs to a certification

• Berth rebuilds, pile work and project cargo: Mobile Crane Operator plus Rigger Level 2
• Hangar and plant maintenance with small hydraulics: Service Truck Crane Operator
• Blind picks over hulls, hangar doors or boiler structures: Signal Person
• Material deliveries to the beaches and Westside job sites: Articulating Crane Operator