Every year, BEMAS organises the Technical Team of the Year competition. On Wednesday 20 March 2024, during the Maintenance and Pumps & Valves trade fair in Antwerp, 4 teams will be put in the spotlight who really make a difference within their company with their achievements in the field of maintenance and technical assets.

The awards show is the perfect opportunity to gain new insights into the best practices of other technical professionals and peers in the world of Maintenance and Asset Management.

Day programme - Hall 5

4 strong candidates will present their cases in the afternoon. In the evening, you will find out who takes home the award.

  • 14h.00 – 14h.30: DHL
  • 14h.30 – 15h.00: Fluvius
  • 15h.30 – 16h.00: Cirqui
  • 16h.00 – 16h.30: Unilin
DHL Aviation
  • Presentation: Building a high-performance in-house Technical Department for new sorting plant
  • Speakers: Peter Lobbinger (Manager Reliability Engineering, DHL) & Jan Verelst (Duty Manager Maintenance, DHL)
    DHL’s new sorting plant in Steenokkerzeel opened in 2017. The MHE Maintenance team is responsible for keeping this plant running. At the time, they started with just under 20 people, who had to become fully familiar with the new technology. Over the past few years, the team has grown to some 60 people, who all contribute to the continuous improvement of the technology and operation. Furthermore, the maintenance organisation has also grown: they strive to create the safest possible working environment, actively work on operational KPIs, and work closely with schools to recruit the necessary technical profiles. In addition, the maintenance team also takes on a major role as a compliance partner as well as in the waste and energy team.

The team is fully autonomous for maintenance, both preventive and corrective. This is followed up by the necessary reports and analyses. Finally, the team is highly motivated to get the best out of themselves every day. The colleagues go through fire for each other, and prove it every day.

  • Presentation: Future-oriented transition of gas grid technical services after corporate merger
  • Speakers: TBA

Fluvius’ gas service team is responsible for operating the gas grid and gas cabins. They commission the gas networks, operate and maintain the network, repair breakdowns, detect leaks, carry out condition-based maintenance on cubicles… The team of 18 people guarantees a safe and secure gas supply for every customer, including an on-call service that is available 7 on 7, 24h on 24. The team received additional municipalities under their care in recent years following the integration of Eandis and Infrax into Fluvius, without any additional colleagues. At the same time, all IT systems were reduced to one tool for both planning, GIS, SAP, logistics, waiting… In addition, they also have to put a lot of effort into energy transmission on site to meet the 2050 climate targets, by, among other things, reducing methane emissions by half by 2030 and injecting biogas into the existing natural gas grid.

Cirqui – P&V Group
  • Presentation: Digitisation of service activities and site-related documents
  • Speakers: Bart Van Herck (BU Manger, Cirqui) & Pawandeep Singh (Account Manager, Cirqui)

The diverse team at P&V Panels – Service maintains, upgrades and modernises low-voltage electrical panels on-site at customers’ premises. They also engineer and install bus bars/rail duct connectors. After starting up in 2018, they have grown explosively in five years and are ready for a further growth trajectory, in which digitalisation also plays a role. This involves the technicians intensively, as they are the ones who form the basis for a quality job with customers. In mid-2022, digitalisation was put into full swing. Planning and timekeeping are currently fully digital, currently the digitalisation of maintenance activities and all site-related documents is underway.

  • Presentation: Digitisation of service activities and site-related documents
  • Speakers: Filip De Keyser (Manager Reliability Engineering, Unilin) & Kurt Dhaene (Manager Reliability Engineering, Unilin)

Unilin’s operational asset management team consists of 4 complementary areas of work: design for maintenance, maintenance 4.0, digitals maintenance tools and value-driven maintenance (VDM) methodology. Through these, they aim to further professionalise and standardise local maintenance teams. Recently, they have made great strides in the operational management of assets for which they have developed several tools in-house, which are now being used by local technical departments:

The asset performance tool is a digital tool that monitors plant availability and records both minor and major recurring incidents as well as major incidents on production lines.
Working with ‘typicals’ that describes a generic plant in use at multiple sites to more easily determine failure patterns and maintenance strategies
BEC is a digital tool that easily manages inspection rounds for both a maintenance and production department to monitor the condition of the installation during various minor maintenance and cleaning tasks
All documentation is stored in the DMS management system to increase accessibility, version control and uniformity, allowing technicians to digitally support

Evening programme

18h.00 – 18h.45

Keynote presentation by Mark Lighthart, Senior Manager, Rijkswaterstaat

18h.45 – 19h.00

Innovation award ceremony

19h.00 – 19h.15

Technical Team of the Year award ceremony

19h.15 – …

Netwerkdrink

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