Construction of the dock facilities at Bredalsholmen was started by Christiansand Dokcompagnie in 1873 and the first ship entered the dry dock in 1876. The company rented out the dry dock and shipyard for all kinds of ship repairs. In 1908, Bredalsholmen was taken over by Kristiansands Mekaniske Verksted, who used the facilities as a repair dock up to 1988. KMV's core business was located in the city and therefore modernization of Bredalsholmen became a slow process. When commercial use of the shipyard ceased in 1988, most of the infrastructure on Bredalsholmen still dated from the 1960s or earlier, which meant that the facilities were suitable for preservation as a Cultural Heritage site.

Since it was established, the dock has been extended twice; the first time between 1927-1930 and then between 1955-1962. A result of both dock extensions was that the original stone walls along the sides of the dock were replaced with concrete and blasted rock. Before the final extension, the dock was 126 metres long and 17.8 metres wide, with the width narrowing toward the bottom of the dock. On the port side, the ledges were made of natural stone, whereas the ledges on the starboard side were made of concrete. After the extension work between 1955-1962, the dock looked as it does to this day and is 137 metres long, 24 metres wide and 6.2 metres deep. During the final extension a tunnel was also built between the dock and the sea to transport rock material for disposal at Steinsundet.

The buildings adjacent to the dock date mainly from between 1945-1965, which was a period of new development at Bredalsholmen. Today's administration building, engineering workshop, electrical installations, mess building, pumps and various arches were built during this period. This reason for this was not only modernization, but also that the old wooden buildings were destroyed by fire. In 1946, the large warehouse building south of the dock (see the photo above) burnt to the ground and toward the end of the 1950s the old engineering workshop on the north side of the dock suffered the same fate. The oldest building at Bredalsholmen is the compressor house, which houses two Atlas compressors from 1960. The building was built in stone in 1883 and was given a new façade facing the dock in the 1940s, when Bredalsholmen's first crane track was laid along the northern side of the dock and the building had to be set further back from the end of the dock.