In its fifth edition, The Heavy Lift Awards celebrate the achievements of the project cargo supply chain. This year, the awards were held in London at the Royal Lancaster Hotel on 25th October.

Sarens is proud to announce that our dedication to safety and talent building has won us great appreciation from the industry as we won the Safety and Training category award at the Heavy Lift Awards 2023.

According to the jury, “Sarens’ dedication to safety – one of the group’s core values – includes in-depth training sessions, the design and implementation of the prevention at Sarens (P@S) tool and the roll out of the Sarens Incident Cause Analysis (SICA) training course, among other initiatives around the globe. Since 2017, Sarens has had its own in-house training centre in Wolvertem and, after becoming a European Crane Operator Licence (ECOL) centre, revamped the facility to increase capacity for both classroom and practical training.”

At Sarens, safety is an integrated and visual player in all our functional departments. We aim to provide a safe and healthy working environment for our employees, contractors, and visitors. All our employees understand their own responsibility to safety and we support them with the necessary tools and training so they develop a pro-active attitude towards Safety, Health, Environmental and Quality management.

In May 2022, a New SHEQ management system P@S was designed and implemented. The roll out started in Western Europe and by December 2022 all Business Units underwent the initial training and implementation. The new and advanced P@S system replaced the already used award winning ISA App. Through this new system all Sarens employees can access and directly report accidents, incidents, and observations. Another major safety related advancement in 2022 was the roll out of the Sarens Incident Cause Analysis (SICA) training course. It is a 2-day course that highlights Investigation, Root Cause and Corrective Action & Preventive Actions. According to Andrew Lees, Group SHEQ Director, Sarens, “We continue to build a SHEQ culture so that it becomes a second nature to all levels.”

To be the reference in heavy lifting and transport, people are our main asset. Sarens continuously invests in its employees. Line Rigo, Training & Development Manager, Sarens says, “By training our own employees, we can exceed the minimum requirements, and better assess and strengthen competencies. Ultimately, our goal is to offer training of the highest quality.” Since 2017, Sarens has its own in-house training center, located at the Sarens yard in Wolvertem, Belgium. Sarens ECOL centre is the first centre in Belgium and the fourth worldwide ever, that imparts the ECOL (European Crane Operator License) courses. Sarens training centre achieved a big milestone in 2022. After achieving ECOL certificate to give European Crane Operator License trainings to the employees in 2021, Sarens revamped this centre in 2022 increasing capacity both for classroom and practical crane training operations and introducing the Liebherr LTM 1030-2.1 according to current standard EN 13000 and full option for live training sessions.

Sarens also received the "Highly Commended" title by the judges for the Innovation award for our Fécamp project. The jury found the development of Sarens bespoke gantry system a "Highly Commended" innovative piece of equipment or technology designed to improve the lift or transport of heavy and oversize cargoes.  Sarens bespoke gantry system was designed and developed in-house to lift, transport and load-out gravity-based structures weighing approximately 4,800 tonnes each. Read the detailed project here.

Wim Sarens, CEO, Sarens says, “Sarens is honoured to be recognised by the industry for its safety and training initiatives to serve the heavy lift and specialised transport industry.” He adds, “We are thankful to our over 5000 employees across 70 countries and all our business partners and clients who have always supported us in our endeavours.”