For businesses that have outgrown the way they are run.
Fitzroy Dock is a consultancy for business transformation in maritime, marine services and heavy industry. We find the gaps a business is carrying, commercial or operational, and build the structure to close them.
Practical work, plainly scoped.
No frameworks for their own sake. Every engagement starts with what you want to achieve, what will be delivered and by when.
Commercial management
Manage work from small jobs to tier-1 contracts: tendering, pricing, negotiating and holding the margin.
Owner-run to corporate-grade
Take owner-run businesses to corporate-grade finance, governance and reporting, including post-acquisition integration. The result runs on process, not on any one person.
Systems that fit
Match the tool to the job: a spreadsheet when that is enough, a CRM or asset-management system when it is not.
Safety-critical operations
Run field operations end to end: P&L, crews, contractors and compliance, in environments where getting it wrong is not an option.
Plain advice
Advise owners and directors on the forward agenda: what to fix, what to protect, and what success should look like.
Teams and safety culture
Build teams and a safety culture that stand on their own, with the HR fundamentals handled: hiring, onboarding and the hard calls when they are needed.
Judged on deliverables, not on promises.
A dry dock for your business.
A dry dock is where a working vessel comes to be put right, then goes back to work stronger. Same idea here, without taking you out of the water.
Agree the destination
Plain terms before any work starts: the outcome wanted, the deliverables, the dates. Scope in writing, measurable, fixed.
Do the work
Inside the business, not from the sidelines. Hands-on by preference, alongside your people, while operations keep running.
Leave it standing
Systems, controls and teams that hold up after we leave. If it only works while we are in the room, it is not finished.
Recent work.
Client names stay out of public view. The shape of the work is below; detail and references in conversation.
Post-acquisition integration
Carried a founder-built marine services operator through its sale to a tier-2 group: corporate-grade finance, governance and reporting built in, without losing what made the business work for two decades.
Fleet compliance and return to service
Took a working marine fleet back to full compliance: cleared regulator findings, ran the maintenance campaigns and rebuilt the safety management systems behind them.
Asset management, off paper
Moved fleet and plant maintenance from paper and memory onto a preventative, audit-ready footing.
Growth under corporate expectations
Grew the Australian field operations of a global services group to private-equity standards: 160+ staff on safety-critical work for tier-1 energy, water and infrastructure clients.
References from owners, directors and port authorities available on request.
Who you get.
Adam Gunn
- MBA, AGSM at UNSW
- 20 years in maritime, marine services and heavy industry
- Sydney based, works wherever the job is
Adam started in the water, not the boardroom: the Royal Australian Navy, then subsea and field operations, then operations management, project superintendence and general management, and most recently commercial leadership of a marine services operator through its sale and integration into a larger group.
That path is the point. He has done the jobs he now manages, so the advice is grounded in how work actually gets delivered: crews, contractors, regulators, margins and all.
Fitzroy Dock exists for one kind of problem: a sound business that has outgrown the way it is run. Adam works inside it, finds what is really going on, builds the fix and leaves it standing.
Start with a conversation.
Tell us what you want to achieve. We will tell you whether we can help, what we would deliver and how long it would take. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.