Concrete Chronicles: A Legacy in Layers

Bill Drakeley is passionate about shotcrete, and has spent his professional life becoming a leading authority on its proper use—a pursuit that has led him into a world of concrete that goes far beyond the comfortable confines of swimming pool construction.

By Eric Herman

Bill Drakeley never imagined his professional life would be defined by pneumatically placed concrete—what most people know today as shotcrete. But that’s exactly how it played out.

“Shotcrete has been the cornerstone of my career,” Drakeley explains. “And swimming pools made from the stuff have become the throughline that connects generations of my family to an ever-evolving industry.”

Drakeley’s connection to concrete runs deep. His grandfather, Joe Scott, a World War II veteran who survived D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, returned home to Waterbury, CT, looking to build a life. He did just about any kind of work—septic systems, site prep, excavation—but always circled back to concrete.

The family’s name was originally Scosafava, later shortened to Scott during the Great Depression. “Like a lot of first- and second-generation Italian-Americans at the time, the name may have changed,” Drakeley says, “but the work ethic didn’t.”

By the 1950s, Joe Scott launched the Scott Swimming Pool Company. He became a franchisee of the pioneering Paddock Pool brand—a company instrumental in shaping early residential and commercial pool systems. At the time, they used dry-mix gunite, a method adapted from tunnel lining and slope stabilization applications. Shotcrete, which uses a wet-mix method, wouldn’t become standard until the mid-1960s.

Pools and Pedigree

Repurposing gunite for backyard pools was a visionary leap—and Scott was all in. He showed people how they were built.

“In front of the company headquarters, he built a pool cross-section and stood it up like a sculpture,” says Drakeley. “You could see the steel, the mesh, the tile line, the plaster. As a kid, I used to stare at it. That display taught me what craftsmanship looked like before I even knew what the word meant.”

Indeed, Drakeley grew up immersed in pools and concrete. One of his earliest memories is of his mother, then a teenager, perched on a diving board over their front-yard pool—the original show pool from 1959, which still exists today.

“In our family, a pool was a composite of craft, science, and legacy,” he says. “That expectation became part of me.”

As the business evolved, so did their expertise. The family expanded into soil stabilization, foundational work, and commercial infrastructure—taking the lessons of shotcrete far beyond pools.

“Anything where you needed to lock down earth, hold back hillsides, or carve out developments on unstable terrain—that’s where we went,” Drakeley says. “Soil nailing, rock support, retaining walls. Shotcrete became the entry point into a much broader world.”

These applications required geotechnical expertise, structural engineering knowledge, and pinpoint execution. Shotcrete, when applied correctly over mesh and with rock bolts, could stabilize entire hillsides or form monolithic underground vaults that could endure seismic events and heavy rains.

“You’d be surprised how much of it is hidden in plain sight,” he adds, “often in the form of those faux rock retaining walls you see along highways from Connecticut to California.”

Expanding Horizons

Drakeley’s journey didn’t stop with the family business. His involvement with the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and the American Shotcrete Association (ASA) expanded his professional scope.

“I found myself shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest minds in concrete—people who never shot a pool in their lives but were masters of placing concrete in domes, tunnels, and treatment plants.”

The fundamentals of shotcrete remained the same: placement velocity, mix design, curing protocol. But the stakes got higher.

“In pools, gravity is your friend. But in tunnels, gravity is your enemy,” he explains. “You’re fighting it with every pass of the nozzle. Overhead shotcrete requires lightning-fast set times and perfect paste penetration.”

The chemistry of concrete—how accelerants and retarders interact with temperature and substrate—became critical. In subterranean work, concrete must set within minutes and form flawless monolithic layers with no voids, no cold joints.

That’s the level Drakeley encountered on New York City’s East Side Access Project beneath Grand Central Terminal, one of the largest and most demanding shotcrete jobs of his career.

“Every nozzleman on that project had to qualify using ACI C660 protocols,” he recalls. “We insisted on hand-nozzling—not just to satisfy code, but because quality comes through the hands of experienced applicators.”

The oversight was intense, including multiple levels of city and union review, along with a third-party Swedish engineering firm hired to monitor every detail.

“There were three layers of oversight between our nozzle and the final acceptance,” he says. “But that’s what it takes to build something that lasts.”

Discipline in the Mix

Drakeley’s tunnel work changed how he viewed swimming pool construction.

“In the depths of those tunnels, there’s no room for guesswork,” he says. “Every ounce of material, every second of set time matters. The standard isn’t good enough. It’s flawless execution under hostile conditions.”

That same precision, he argues, is often missing in high-end pool work.

“One of the biggest issues I see is a basic lack of understanding of concrete chemistry,” he says. “Builders rely on subcontractors. Subcontractors rely on batch plants. But when something goes wrong—when it won’t pump, doesn’t set, or cracks—everyone points fingers. And nobody truly understands why.”

According to Drakeley, mastering shotcrete requires deep knowledge of cementitious materials, mix components, ambient conditions, and how they interact.

“With infrastructure jobs, if the mix doesn’t pump, you shut the job down,” he says. “People lose money. Sometimes they lose their lives. The stakes force you to get it right from the start.”

On one job, a young inspector nearly shut the project down because the slump didn’t match lab specs—without understanding that the 22-degree temperatures and frozen truck drums were affecting the material’s behavior.

“He didn’t understand the chemistry, the context, or the consequence,” Drakeley says. “I threw his report in the trash. Not because I disrespected the code—but because I respected it more than he did. The paper didn’t match the wall. The wall told the truth.”

New Terrain: From Tunnels to Terroir

Drakeley’s deep dive into tunnel work eventually led him to a very different world: California wine country. It started with a friend—Cameron Tapp, CEO of Clearwater Tech—who introduced him to small-scale winemaking in San Luis Obispo.

“Cameron said I just hadn’t tried the good stuff,” Drakeley recalls. “He was right. I got hooked—not just on the wine, but on the craft behind it.”

It was George Yoggy, one of Drakeley’s concrete mentors, who pointed out the natural connection.

“George told me, ‘Wine caves are just tunnels with barrels.’ And he was right,” Drakeley says. He began applying tunnel shotcrete methods to custom wine cave construction—welded mesh, rock bolts, natural gun finishes, curved arches—same structural principles, now with aesthetic and agricultural flair.

In 2015, Drakeley became a partner in Deovlet Vineyards in Los Osos, CA. Today, he’s more than a shotcrete contractor—he’s a vineyard owner.

“We’re planting our own grapes,” he says. “And yes, someday I’ll build a wine cave the right way—using shotcrete.”

No Shortcuts

Whether in pools, tunnels, or vineyards, Drakeley’s philosophy is consistent: discipline, chemistry, adaptability, and craft.

“You don’t get high-performance results by hiring the cheapest crew or accepting the default mix,” he says. “You get it by understanding every layer, every curve, every cure cycle. Shotcrete is a way of thinking. And if you want to do it right—whether underground or under the sun—there are no shortcuts.”

The Permeability Debate

The following excerpt is from an article by the late George Yoggy, a major educator in the world of shotcrete and major influence on Bill Drakeley. Originally published in the Summer 2011 issue of Shotcrete Magazine, his insight remains relevant today.

“Beyond the increasing creativity of watershape designs, another issue that is pulling the watershaping industry back into the fold of the greater concrete industry is a growing set of discussions about permeability. The permeability of pneumatically placed concrete is a non-issue—if it’s done right.

With proper mixture design and proper application, 4000 psi shotcrete is classified as low-permeability. That means the shell itself should hold water, even without a plaster finish… The business end of the concrete is the side that contacts soil, where corrosion from groundwater is a threat. Less permeable concrete protects the reinforcing steel. That’s the goal.

With proper compression and application, pneumatically placed concrete is virtually void-free, has low permeability, and will withstand the tests of time.”