After graduating in Mechanical Engineering in October, I have finally found a job. When looking for a job, I made a list of interesting companies. And at the very top of that list was a famous Dutch company "Mammoet". And behold, I am going to work for that company.

Mammoet is a company that specialises in transport and lifting operations. One of the most famous Mammoet operations would be the salvaging of the Russian nuclear submarine "Kursk". Mammoet worked together with Smit to lift the submarine from the seabed, and then to transport it back to dry dock.

This operation was on the news everywhere and there were plenty of documentaries on Discovery.

But there are plenty of other things, like installing windmill parks at sea. For this the windmills need to be transported to sea and then installed. This is what Mammoet does. They bring the shit over there, then they lift that shit in place and then they fasten that shit. So basically horizontal transport (cars, boats) and vertical transport (cranes).

This makes Mammoet unique compared to crane building companies. Mammoet does not build cranes and then sell them to a customer. No, a customer wants something to be placed somewhere. Mammoet then tries to solve this as efficiently as possible. They might use cranes and transport vehicles they already have or they might need to build and design a entirely new crane or transport vehicle from scratch. 

I will be working there as a Junior Engineer. I will keep busy with lots of things. Sometimes I will help designing new cranes, but I will be also thinking of other things. It is nice to design a new crane, but you need to get it in location. What if it is in Africa and the bridges will not support the weight of your crane? Then you need a new bridge, or you need to transport your crane in pieces. But if your crane cannot be divided in small enough pieces, you must redesign the crane. You also need space to assemble your crane and once you are done you need space to disassemble it. You cannot afford to get on-site and figure out that there is not enough space.

Lastly you need to check the availability of cranes and transport vehicles. You cannot plan to use a certain crane at a certain time, only to discover that is currently used in Africa while you are in New Zeeland. Yeah, that would be embarrassing. You can see that this will not be an ordinary desk job. I need to be on-site at times to coordinate things. Kinda sounds like a Zelda-like puzzle, does it not? Should be fun!

Of course the contents in this blogs are a very simplified version of reality, but I gets my point across.