Doing things the Dutch way
KAEFER in Benelux
Sometimes, all it takes to solve a challenge is a bit of collaboration and offering a helping hand.
Individuals going their own way will only get you so far. It’s usually better to work collaboratively to find effective solutions to a problem, as KAEFER in Benelux shows.
In most of the industrial facilities where insulators work, there are strict rules limiting the use of motorised vehicles. Yet the distances that need to be travelled at these spawling complexes is significant.
For example, at one site in Antwerp, the average employee spends at least 45 minutes per day walking around on site to and from various areas.
On top of that, transporting materials back and forth in open vehicles and working on the ground can lead to prefabricated cladding getting scratched or insulation materials becoming dirty and wet.
So, how could the teams speed up their travel and protect the materials they used? The answer should come as no surprise to anyone who’s spent time in the Netherlands: bicycles.
On the right track
Bicycles are healthy, do not emit CO₂ and when it comes to transporting people, efficient and quick.
Yet that still doesn’t solve the problem of moving insulation and cladding material around an industrial site. Up until recently, insulators used wheelbarrows, which may be stable and easy to use, but are also slow and unwieldy.
Bicycles with trailers attached work better but are limited by the amount of material that can be carried and the fact that they are still exposed to the elements. To work out the ideal solution, KAEFER’s team had to look to the past for inspiration.
Back to the future
Up until the 1970s, small Dutch entrepreneurs used so-called ‘Bakfiets’ to transport and deliver their products. Bakfiets are cargo bicycles or tricycles specifically designed to carry larger volumes of things and were even commonly used to take groups of children to school. Inspired by the versatility and efficiency, the KAEFER Benelux team set out to develop what they called ‘Bakfiets 2.0’.
©Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam
The design criteria were relatively simple: Bakfiets 2.0 had to be high quality, completely mechanical with no electric parts and feature a ‘box’ with a lid that could turn sideways and double as a work bench. The team found a supplier that could tick most of those boxes and all that had to be done in house was fitting the lid.
The result is as simple as it is clever: a quick, efficient, non-motorised transport vehicle that doubles up as a surface for insulators to work on.
After much tinkering, a working prototype is currently doing the rounds on KAEFER maintenances sites in Benelux, much to the joy of the workers who get to ride them.
From ground-breaking bikes to innocent insulation
Bakfiets 2.0 is just one example of the practical and collaborative approach that guides the team at KAFER. Another is the partnership with smoothie company innocent. It started with a small job for scaffolding. Innocent were setting up a new factory in the Netherlands and needed access to heights so that they could build their facility from the ground up.
Initially the scope was a modest 2-3 months’ worth of jobs for 5-10 people. However, this quickly grew to 30-40 people helping innocent out, based on KAEFER’s experience and expertise in the food production industry.
Innocent were increasingly happy with the work, and they started asking KAEFER for more support. The key was that the relationship between the two parties was more akin to a partnership than simply purchasing and providing services. Under normal circumstances in these kinds of facilities, it’s usual to work with EPC contractors. But in this case, the partnership flourished between the client and KAEFER.
“It may sound overly simple, but ‘how can we help?’ really is our philosophy,” explains Matthijs van der Veen, Commercial Manager at KAEFER in the Netherlands. “We believe that we can add real value to a client’s business that goes beyond numbers. A collaborative approach based on mutual benefit and partnership goes much further and actually makes more monetary sense in the long run.”
From developing new, LEAN mobility solutions and building a relationship with innocent to convincing the operators of the world’s largest PET factory at Indorama in Rotterdam to go with KAEFER for their maintenance, asking how KAEFER can help and providing solutions quickly seems to work very well.