Richard S. Weeks, 73, who as the fourth-generation head of family-owned Weeks Marine Inc. set new industry standards in expanding the Cranford, NJ-based company into an international provider of construction, dredging, emergency response, tunneling, coastal restoration, aggregate production and related services, died Oct. 4 in New Vernon, NJ.
Starting working for the company as a teenager at its shipyard in Port Newark, NJ, in the 1970s, Weeks rose to president, CEO and chairman of the board. Under his leadership, it grew from a New York City stevedoring company founded in 1919 by his great-grandfather Francis to a multidisciplinary operation with 1,500 employees and revenues of nearly $1 billion by 2022.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, acquisitions were key to market growth and expansion. These included MP Howlett in 1983, Healy Tibbitts in 1989, American Dredging Co. in 1993 and TL James in 1998. Weeks Marine also purchased McNally Construction, a major Canadian-based tunneling and shipbuilding contractor, in 2011 and entered the aggregates business in 2016, creating US aggregates. The unit was sold last year to construction materials giant CRH plc.
Building a project legacy
Weeks Marine and its units worked with contractor Kiewit International on US infrastructure projects, including the Willis Avenue Swing Bridge in New York City; the Euclid Stormwater and Wastewater Storage Tunnel in Cleveland; the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension Tunnel in Ontario and key projects for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Weeks Marine was also part of the team that replaced the more than eight-decade-old Goethals Toll Bridge connecting Elizabeth, NJ, and Staten Island, NY, in 2017-18.
see tribute page here.
Other major projects include the construction of Little Island Park on the Hudson River in Manhattan, work on the Tappan Zee and Governor Mario Cuomo bridges north of the city, and the Pearl Harbor spillway in Hawaii. During Weeks’ tenure, the company also responded to emergencies such as the cleanup after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the impacts of Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and the intact recovery of US Airways Flight 540 after its 200 crash landing in Hudson.
Weeks Marine used the Weeks 533 crane for this particular haul, one of the largest rotary marine cranes in the eastern United States, with a 248-foot-long boom that could lift up to 500 tons. “No one [had] never recovered a ray lost in the water. We didn’t know how structurally sound it would be,” said one.
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The recovery was completed after a marathon 22-hour effort, when competitors had said the operation would have taken at least a week. “We brought it back from the dead,” Weeks told ENR, adding that the company at the time had performed more than 2,000 heavy lifts without an accident.
Finally, the CEO oversaw the sale of Weeks Marine to Kiewit, effective January 1, 2023, for an undisclosed amount. “Our strengths are complementary,” Weeks told ENR at the time, adding that the company was “well capitalized” and had a succession plan. “It’s a good deal for both parties,” he said.
“Ultimately, they didn’t want any other company to buy it except Kiewit,” said Eric Ellefsen, who succeeded Weeks as chairman and CEO and remains in the role. “We come from similar cultures and our core values align.”
Mentor and role model
Weeks was a past president of Dredging Contractors of America and the Moles heavy industry civil professional group, which along with the Beavers professional group recognized him for his outstanding achievements in construction. He was also inducted into the National Academy of Construction and served on the board of The New Jersey Marine Science Consortium, New York Maritime Association and Waterfront Alliance.
Weeks was also a strong supporter of Rutgers University’s School of Engineering, to which his father, Richard N. Weeks, an alumnus of the company who died in 2025 at age 97, gave $6 million for a 106,000-square-foot Advanced Engineering Building and an undergraduate endowment of about $10 million, the largest engineering endowment in Rutgers history.
At the time of his death, Richard S Weeks. He had also been participating in a clinical trial of daraxonrasib for advanced pancreatic cancer “as an opportunity to help others who may one day face the same devastating disease,” the family obituary said.
Having started his career working alongside company employees, Weeks understood operations. he maintained strong bonds with workers and was regarded for his ability to mentor young people.
“One time when we were aboard a huge dredge working on the Mississippi River outside of New Orleans, everybody called him Rich, he was one of the guys, not the owner of the company. He was awesome,” says longtime colleague Robert Alger, former president and CEO of The Lane Construction Corp. and now division president of AtkinsRealis.
Tributes from current and former employees, some now in executive positions at other companies, describe him as “a force of nature and pillar of Weeks Marine”, as a “guiding light for the organisation” who “sparked the entrepreneurial spirit”, as someone “never bigger than the person next to him” and as “a true industry legend”.
A native of New Jersey, he earned a joint BA-MA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
A celebration of Weeks’ life is scheduled for Saturday. Oct. 24, 11 a.m. at The First Presbyterian Church of New Vernon with a reception to follow at the Basking Ridge Country Club. In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory may be made to the Music Fund of the First Presbyterian Church of New Vernon or the Boys & Girls Club of Newark, NJ.
