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NEW DIMENSIONS IN PROJECT CARGO UNIQUE DEMANDS FUEL EQUIPMENT INNOVATION
BY CARLY FIELDS Credit: LM Wind Power
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ISSUE 6 / 2016
hen you’re in the business of moving large and often unwieldly cargoes, crossing your fingers and hoping it all works out is a surefire way to guarantee failure on a spectacular scale. You need people, and welltrained, innovative people at that. But you also need a plethora of specialist equipment to stand a chance of moving that 40-ton industrial generator or that 80-meter turbine blade to a job site on the other side of the world. With loads getting ever heavier, longer, deeper or a combination of all three, equipment manufacturers are having to push technological boundaries to meet the demands of shippers.
Wind turbines stand apart as a project cargo that simply refuses to be restricted by traditional carriage constraints, and movers are being continually challenged to find ways to shift these renewable beasts. With the world’s largest wind turbine blade a whopping 88.4 meters in length, traditional methods of packing them into frames for transport no longer sits well with the supporting trailers. Specially designed equipment is necessary to bypass the need for an extremely long chassis. At the other end of the spectrum, heavier loads make different demands of transportation, with crane weights steadily rising to keep pace with increases in the weight of cargoes. www.breakbulk.com
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SOLVING CRANE CAPACITY MYSTERIES Crane owners and rental companies have expressed disappointment at the lukewarm response to date from manufacturers to their plans to create a new Crane Capacity Index, or CCI. ESTA – the European Association for Abnormal Road Transport and Mobile Cranes – is attempting to create the index to aid transparency in the industry. Sander Splinter, ESTA’s section crane president, said: “We are striving for transparency in the industry, and especially transparency for the enduser. What kind of crane am I buying? What kind of crane am I renting?” However, he added: “I have to say that we have been disappointed with the response from manufacturers so far, and we will be calling on them to give us more support in this project.” Explaining why he felt a CCI was needed, he said: “In the old days the crane capacity was simply expressed as follows: The maximum lifting capacity a crane could lift at 3 meters of radius, 360 degrees. “Today, crane capacity is determined in many different ways – for example, by expressing the maximum lifting capacity at 2.7- or 2.5- and even 2.3-meter radius; or only over the rear (back-end) of the crane.” “Manufacturers choose many different categories in between the well-known classes, such as 55-ton, or come with name conventions from which it is impossible to derive the crane capacity – something we believe our CCI will resolve.” Splinter, who is also managing director of Mammoet Europe, concluded: “We will keep working on this, but obviously it will be a lot easier to complete with the cooperation of all of the major manufacturers – and we hope that they will eventually see that it will benefit the whole industry.” 10 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE
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And transportation is not the only challenge. Lifting everheavier units into Credit: Mammoet place, either for transportation or on delivery, stress tests cranes and jack-up systems. Mammoet has developed a new concept crane that can lift loads of up to a record-breaking 24,000 tons. Jointly developed with Stoof E&I, its Focus heavy-lift crane is designed for ultraheavy-lifting use in confined areas, and as a containerized crane it’s relatively fast and easy to transport to site. Patrick Dick, managing director of Myanmar-based The Freight Co. and founder of Global Project Logistics Network, or GPLN, points to a number of must-have pieces of kit that The Freight Co uses on a regular basis: • Rigid inflatable boats, or RIBs, to undertake survey on Myanmar’s waterways. • A sonar depth sounder to sound the depth of a river. • A laser distance measuring device to measure height or width clearances. • A clinometer to measure the angle Mammoet’s Focus crane is designed for ultra-heavy-lifting use in confined areas.
of elevation/incline when going uphill with heavy loads on the road. And if the right piece of kit isn’t in the toolbox, this is an industry that prides itself on coming up with unique solutions. As David Collett, president of the European Association of Abnormal Road Transport and Mobile Cranes, or ESTA, and managing director of Collett & Sons Ltd. in the UK, puts it: “You have to continually innovate and create different solutions, and look to the trailer manufacturers and our own engineering department to provide the answers.” Louis Perrin, project manager at Hemisphere Freight Services, adds that bespoke Louis Perrin
options can make Hemisphere Freight Services a project. In a recent project, handling the transportation of an 180,000-kilogram transformer from Rotterdam to the UK, the transformer was lifted via a mobile crane onto stools ISSUE 6 / 2016
RELIABLE BREAKBULK CARRIER www.fednav.com
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and beams that had been welded into its specialist roll-on, roll-off Credit: Hemisphere seagoing barge. Freight Services “When the transformer arrived into the UK port we were able to discharge the barge within 30 minutes through rolling an SPMT [self-propelled modular transporter] underneath the transformer, jacking up to the required height to fully support the product,” Perrin said. “After securing the transformer to the SPMT we could then drive it from the barge using the ramps. This made the operation safer and far more efficient.” Changing cargo dimensions are challenging forwarders.
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SAFETY ISSUES PARAMOUNT
But it’s not only the size of machinery that’s evolving; with bigger units come greater safety issues that pose challenges to quality operations. Protranser International Logistics Co. Ltd., a local company in China and GPLN member, sees value in better regulation of the sector to address these issues. Leo Liu, marketing manager, believes that it should be mandatory to have specific licenses for operating equipment designed to handle abnormal and project cargo loads. This would ensure, he said, control of handling and safety risks, protecting the interest of the cargo owner as well as the equipment owner. Hemisphere’s Perrin agrees that mandatory licenses for operating equip-
ment handling abnormal and project cargo loads is essential. “It is key that operators have the proper training and/ or licenses for operating any equipment which are used to handle abnormal and project cargo loads. Safety is the No. 1 consideration when handling any project cargo, therefore it is of the utmost importance for operatives to have the correct training and licenses.” These licenses should go hand in hand with common standards for operation of project cargo equipment, he said. While reputable companies may already have common or regulated standards in place, there is always room for improvement. Highland Project Logistics’ Radek Maly would like to see mandatory certification of forwarders as well to increase the overall knowledge base in the industry. However, he questions Radek Maly the feasibility of common standards Highland Project Logistics for operations of equipment when dealing with project cargoes. “Each country is vastly different, so a global standard will not work,” he said. And while the project cargo industry consistently flies under the radar of regional bodies, he calls for ongoing self-regulation and certification as “better than anything coming from the top as directives.” Perrin pointed out that requirements for risk assessments and toolbox talks prior to an operation varies between developed and developing regions and nations. “In these instances, it is vital to take extra care that the operatives and equipment are suitable.” Better education, qualifications and training within the industry from a young age would ensure more qualified talent within the profession, he added. Maly notes that the most useful piece of equipment is “our minds,” but he also sees value in a website that could do various calculations, such as loadability, combined with information for various markets, equipment specifications and the like – a one-stop shop for forwarders to hone their project cargo loading skills. ISSUE 6 / 2016
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LICENSED TO THRILL
In terms of licensing, ESTA is creating a European Crane Operator License, or ECOL, with financial support from the European Erasmus+ program that backs education, training and lifelong learning to boost economic competitiveness. Work on the ECOL certification program is expected to be largely complete by the end of the year, setting standards that testing companies will have to abide by and ensuring a level playing field. A next step involves setting up of the ECOL Foundation to oversee the future running of the whole project, which should be in place by 2017. “I believe ECOL will have a hugely positive impact on this industry’s safety performance, its recruitment success and our efficiency,” ESTA’s Collett said. “There is a long way to go, but the signs are good, and we are making excellent progress. “This is the biggest project ever
undertaken by ESTA, and we strongly believe that using ECOL as a way of training everyone to the same benchmark will raise standards, improve site safety and boost employment opportunities for qualified operators. The simple truth is that the industry is changing, the equipment is becoming more sophisticated and training schemes across Europe need to reflect those changes. In addition, the workforce is getting older, which means skills shortages are going to get worse.”
BEST PRACTICE GUIDE FOR
SELF-PROPELLED MODULAR TRANSPORTERS
SAFETY PRIORITY NO. 1
Safety has to be priority No. 1 in any project. ESTA’s publication of its SPMT Best Practice Guide in 2016 helps to address the problem of trailers tipping over, which has happened on some occasions even though the existing operating rules and stability calculations were precisely followed. The association set up a special working group following concerns first expressed by the
ESTA’s SPMT Best Practice Guide is available for download at
estaeurope.eu.
Overbridge
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ISSUE 6 / 2016
heavy transport industry and clients at a conference back in 2012. Collett said: “Safety is at the heart of ESTA’s work, and when an accident happens the fallout can be monstrous. Of course, and most importantly, there is the issue of personal safety, and that is terrible. But on top of that, a whole project can be threatened and the consequential losses can be huge.” The working group included representatives from several leading ESTA members, plus manufacturers and clients. The resultant best practice guide covers a wide range of topics including: • Lines of communication. • Equipment capacity, maintenance and design. • Design of the load. • Load documentation and information. • Operator and engineer training. • Engineering transport. • Work environment. “It has been a very challenging undertaking,” Collett said. “The intention of this document is to correlate the chain of responsibility for all stakeholders involved with SPMT operations, recommend best practice and serve as a ‘baseline starting point’ for the use of SPMTs from which more complex transport engineering jobs can be developed. “However, it should be noted that the document has been produced and should be read, with the view that such a complex subject as the ‘use of SPMTs’ means it cannot be prescriptive, or offer engineering calculations, due to the many complex possibilities for this unique transport method.” ESTA will be working towards getting the guide read as widely as possible and in as many markets as possible. Collett acknowledges that SPMTs are not the answer to every situation, but he says they do have a lot of flexibility compared to hydraulic modular trailers and remain an important tool in the toolbox. But innovation, even for these trusty project cargo workhorses, could disrupt their widespread use in the future. Mammoet’s Trailer Power Assist, or TPA, is in the field testing stage and promises an assisted road speed five times higher than SPMTs at only one-third of the fuel consumption. With a drawbar pull equivalent to two fully loaded prime movers, one TPA can replace at least two trucks, reducing the
length and enhancing maneuverability. If larger and heavier cargoes threaten to render the almighty SPMTs obsolete, no existing project cargo equipment can be deemed “safe” from overhaul to meet the new normal of project cargo handling. BB
Carly Fields has reported on the shipping industry for the past 16 years, covering bunkers and broking and much in between.
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