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HARD HITTER HITTERS MAUGUS AY 2021 T 2019
LIFTING THE CUSTOMER
FOCUSING ON SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES, MAMMOET’S NEW GROUP COMMERCIAL OFFICER DARREN ADAMS SAYS THE GLOBAL GIANT’S WORK IS AS MUCH ABOUT BUILDING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS AS IT IS ABOUT MOVING HEAVY OBJECTS
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lobal engineered heavy-lifting specialist Mammoet has appointed Darren Adams as its new group commercial officer, Introducing the new incumbent to the industry and the global press, Mammoet recently issued a communique that had Adam’s thoughts and deliberations on the industry he is a veteran of. With a signed Newcastle United shirt on the wall of his home office in the north-east of England a reminder of the world that will shortly return, Adams finds his horizons narrowed. But making it his mission to serve small and medium-sized businesses better than before, he says: “Somebody could give us a call this morning, we’ll be there this afternoon and tomorrow we’ve probably got equipment on the ground.” A bold statement from the man now leading Mammoet’s commercial activity - but one gained from a lifetime of understanding customers of all sizes. A stalwart of the heavy lifting industry, he’s taken on
every job it has to offer - from managing continents to clambering under SPMTs. A mechanical engineer, he was given his first big break in the industry thanks to a familiar name. Starting with a local heavy haulage firm in the UK, he was head-hunted for the new UK branch of a foreign-owned company - Van Seumeren - starting his career in North Sea offshore. “I was working with all the SPMTs that Van Seumeren had in the UK, which was about 176 lines if I remember rightly – at that time this was a huge amount, now it’s very little.” It was a time spent getting his hands dirty. “I was doing the engineering, but I was also going to the job sites and running the jobs, executing the work with the guys. If we had to connect the SPMTs together and get them ready, I was there with the team doing it.” He was responsible for projects from the first call until equipment was back at base, taking care of colleagues deployed from their native Netherlands. “The guys really liked coming to the UK because everything was organised for them, and it was also close to some pubs and some decent eating houses. That part of the job; the human side, is very important for the job.” It’s a time Adams remembers fondly, and clearly one
that plays a big part in who he is today, and how he approaches his work. His passion for projects lies first and foremost in the yard; in using his experience to understand each lift on a detailed technical level and communicating it effectively - or as he puts it, “I’ve been there; I’ve got the T-shirt”. One project stands out in particular for an offshore fabrication yard in Scotland: “I sold the project, but also drove the module out of the fabrication shop, put it onto the barge, set it down, brought the trailers back off, de-mobilised – with the team alongside me - so the clients saw that we could tender, negotiate, engineer and execute the whole thing.” Around the turn of the century, Adams took the opportunity to manage the North American business of the newly-renamed Mammoet. This experience was transformative – he would spend the majority of the following two decades there, becoming an increasingly important figure in the no-nonsense world of Texas oil & gas. It’s from these experiences – leaving projects filthy and exhausted, working side-by-side with customers – that Adams draws his conclusions about business. “You’ve got to be close to the customer.
