Sorry folks. It has been several weeks since my last post and I hope you haven’t forgotten my dredging details. This website is just a personal side line that I have to maintain and expand in my own time. Lately my time was rather limited and all my creative capabilities were engaged on an urgent case for my employer. But I do have some thoughts that I wanted to share with you, they just have to wait for better times. Part of my job is, to take care of a ‘Dredging Experience Centre’. A touch and feel museum area, where we can take customers and sales- and service people to explain and discuss about their particular dredging project. I have tons of material for presentations and handouts on this topic, so it will be useful next time, when I am otherwise occupied. I just needed an opening to offer you some perspective on the scattered articles that will pop up sometimes.
And what a better opening can be than the opening of the Dredging Experience itself. On Wednesday November 16th, 2016, Mr. Kommer Damen himself opened our new office building and received the honour to show him our exhibits1.
The starting point of a tour through the dredging experience is the overview poster with all the different processes that are explained with the available exhibits. Each process is indicated at the corresponding dredging vessels, that feature the relevant equipment. Processes and phenomena range from basic soil mechanics to fluid dynamics and the influence of the various processes on the total dredge production. There are also exhibits specifically on explaining our design choices, e.g. our mechanical seal. Other exhibits show recent research and development like ‘spud pole holding forces’ and the DynaCover2.
The Dredging Experience is exactly what it says: you will be able to ‘experience’ the various processes. Most of them require some manual effort and this will show you the differences in soil properties or hydraulic configuration. This provides an excellent opportunity to have an in depth discussion with clients about their particular dredging project and the best possible solution for their specific requirements. Regularly, I see happy faces of enlightenment coming out of the exhibition. Commercial colleagues when they understand the customer across language barriers. And especially customers as they feel at ease, because they can explain on a practical level about their problem and see how much we go into the details of the dredging process to optimize for their purpose. And even when they walk out without buying, they do so with an everlasting positive impression. They will easily apply the new insights into their daily operation at home.
The approach in designing and selecting the exhibits was in line with what I learned from my old professor de Koning. He insisted that even as academic students, we still had to examine the dredging processes by hand to truly understand what we were learning3. His favourite quote was from Denis the Rougemont4: ‘But the true condition of man is to think with his hands.’
References
- Kommer Damen opening the ‘Damen Dredging Experience’, DredgingToday
- DynaCover Outer Pump Casing, Damen
- De Koning (1978) ‘Denken met de handen’, TU Delft
- De Rougemont (1936) ‘Penser avec les Mains’, Wikipedia