Heavy Lift Specialist was established by Richard Krabbendam in 2008, aiming for improving safety in the Transport, Lifting, Shipping & Offshore Industry. Richard started organizing seminars and courses since 2008, in which he transfers his profound experience and know-how to others in the industry. The Seminar / Masterclass has been presented over 100 times in 26 countries, and more then 2,700 participants have gained their knowledge.

The Heavy Lift News website was founded and edited by Heavy Lift Specialist Richard L.Krabbendam since 2014. Richard has started this website in order to offer the Heavy Transport, Lifting, Shipping, Offshore, Aircraft and Wind Industry a platform, in which they can share their project stories, knowledge, experience and latest developments.

In 1989 I joined Jumbo Shipping and a Jumbo Land department was set up, which I headed for 10 years. Jumbo Land was responsible for the project acquisition, engineering and project execution of complex "Total Transport" Projects, which involved the transportation of the heavy lifts from workshop floor until placed onto foundation on a jobsite somewhere in the world. Many projects were executed on behalf of ABB and General Electric in the Power Generation Industry and others and involved beachlandings on remote islands in Indonesia and Malaysia as well as crossing the Andes with generators of 135 tons on their way to Santa Cruz in Bolivia.I started my career in Heavy Transport & Lifting in July 1973 and have been in this Industry for 42 years now.

Project Manager

Project Manager in Heavy Lift Transport & Lifting, working in The Netherlands, France and other countries. Responsible for project aquisition, engineering and project execution from start to finish

Together with Joop Roodenburg I founded ITREC in 1980, which is an engineering and rigging engineering consultant for the heavy transport and lifting industry. Soon we joined forces with Huisman Special Lifting Equipment, which company was owned by Joop's father. Joop concentrated on the design of special lifting equipment, such as the 550 tons mastcranes of the mv Happy Buccaneer, the 1600 ts sheerlegs of the Taklift 4, while I worked as an in house engineering consultant for Van Seumeren Holland B.V.In 1984 I changed my activities within ITREC and focused more on the sales of the new crane concept for offshore lifting: the Mast Crane. In those days only Allseas and Smit recognized the special advantages of the mast crane compared to a pedestal crane.Since then the Mast crane has been accpeted in the Industry and many of these crane types have been in use now in Heavy Lift Shipping Compnaies (Jumbo Shipping and Big Lift) as well as in the Offshore Industry (Allseas, Seatrucks, Toisa etc.)

Big LiftJuly 1973 – February 1980 (6 years 8 months)I started my Heavy Transport & Lifting career with Big Lift in Dordrecht in 1973. I was manager project division which was set up to engineer and execute the ever more complicated transport, lifting and shipping projects. Big Lift was formed by the merging of Van der Laan Shipping and Trading and van Twist Crane hire and Transport.In 1979 I was successful in contracting the largest contract in Big Lift's history at that time with the 2 year contract to move all major heavy lifts for the Yanbu NGL facilities and loads to be transported in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia for Saudi Aramco.In 1980 together with Joop Roodenburg (Presently CEO and owner of Huisman Equipment B.V.) I set up ITREC (International Transport & Rigging Engineering Consultants.