Twenty-one years on one stretch of water.
Deckmasters Marine was founded in Vero Beach in 2005. The Indian River Lagoon has been the job site ever since — the same license, the same crew philosophy, the same water. What has deepened is the permit record, the reputation, and the number of communities where the work still stands.
21
Years on the lagoon & oceanfront
85
Combined crew-years
40+
Projects delivered
8
Private communities
Keith Hennessy
Founder · Est. 2005
Keith Hennessy has been reading this water since 2005.
Keith started Deckmasters with a single crew and a straightforward premise: build marine structures on the Indian River Lagoon the way they should be built — permitted through every agency, engineered for what the water actually does, and constructed by people who understand the difference between a structure that lasts twenty years and one that lasts four. That first project was a residential dock in Vero Beach. The permit took eleven weeks. The dock is still there.
He is on every project personally — not from the office, but on the water, reading soil conditions and adjusting pile spacing when what is below the muck line differs from what the survey showed. The projects that go wrong are almost always the ones where the principal stopped showing up. That is not this firm's operating model, and after twenty-one years it never has been.
To build marine structures on the Indian River Lagoon that outlast the people who commission them — permitted through every agency, engineered for what this water actually does, and finished to a standard set by the neighborhood, not the contract.
What twenty-one years buys that a new company can't.
Marine construction is not a trade you can enter and master in a season. On this waterway, the difference between a newcomer and Deckmasters is not effort — it is the specific knowledge, relationships, and scar tissue that only twenty-one years on the same water can produce.
A permit record, not a promise
Forty-plus approved FDEP and Army Corps applications on this one waterway. A firm that opened last year starts every review at zero history — we don't.
We know the reviewer
Which Indian River County FDEP district handles the application, what the seagrass-survey timing has to be, which Corps nationwide-permit category applies. Relationships built over two decades, not read from a manual.
We've watched designs fail
We have seen seawalls that looked adequate fail in the second major storm — and redesigned around it. A new company hasn't reached year fifteen yet. We're past it, several times over.
One waterway, not fifty
Twenty-one years on the Indian River Lagoon specifically — its tide swing, its brackish salt, its manatee windows. Generic Florida experience is not the same knowledge.
A reputation you can't buy
Two decades of neighbors watching the work from the next estate over. In John's Island and Windsor, the next job comes from the last one standing — a chain a newcomer can't shortcut.
Crew that has done this
Eighty-five combined years driving the pile-driver, pouring the marine cap, running the final walk-through. Senior tradespeople who've weathered the storms the brochures don't mention.
The Indian River Lagoon shapes every decision we make.
The lagoon is not a generic Florida waterway. It carries specific tidal patterns, manatee protection zones, seagrass beds, and FDEP Aquatic Preserve designations that change the engineering equation on every project. Pile spacing that works in open water works differently near a seagrass bed. Dock heights shift in manatee-season windows. Materials that hold up in Gulf conditions are not the same as those that survive the lagoon's brackish salt and four-foot tide swing.
A contractor who has never navigated Indian River Lagoon permitting is not the same as one who has done it across forty projects in seven communities. That knowledge is built over years on one waterway. We have been on this one for twenty-one.
“Most marine contractors stop at build. We hold all four — design, engineering, permits, and the work itself.”
— Keith Hennessy, Founder
Private clientele. Named communities. No volume bidding.
Deckmasters does not participate in competitive-bid processes for residential work. The clients who call are almost always referred by a neighbor, a property attorney, or a club staff member who has watched the firm's work on the water for years. That referral model is deliberate.
Volume contractors bid low to win, then manage margin through material substitution and schedule compression. That does not earn the next referral in a community where neighbors talk. The communities above are places where the work is visible from other estates and from the water. The standard is not set by the contract — it is set by the neighborhood.
Florida License
Florida Registered General Contractor — Indian River County, Lic. RG291103858.
Insurance
Jones Act, Longshoreman's (USL&H) + marine liability. Certificate of insurance available within 24 hours.
In Business Since
Serving the Indian River Lagoon since 2005. Built for this water.
Start with a conversation.
Keith walks your waterfront, assesses the structure, and gives you a plain-language summary — before any proposal, before any commitment.