Van Oord’s award-winning reclamation pipe gasket redesign

Sometimes a small improvement can have a huge impact. Van Oord’s new reclamation pipe gasket design significantly reduces the risk of potential finger injuries with an easy to implement and cost-effective solution. The design was chosen as the winner of IADC’s Safety Award 2025.

Submissions for the IADC Safety Award 2025

When individual employees, teams and companies view everyday processes and situations through a continuous lens of safety, they can each contribute to making all aspects of operational processes, whether on water or land, safer. For this year's Safety Award, IADC's Safety Committee received 14 submissions. Each one is assessed on five different categories; sustainability; level of impact on the industry; simplicity in use; effectiveness; and level of innovation.

Submissions for the 2024 IADC safety awards

When individual employees, teams and companies view everyday processes and situations through a continuous lens of safety, they can each contribute to making all aspects of operational processes, whether on water or land, safer. For the 2024 Safety Awards, IADC's Safety Committee received 14 submissions. Each one is assessed on five different categories: sustainability; level of impact on the industry; simplicity in use; effectiveness; and level of innovation.

Award winners share their innovative designs

Cutter head repairs in the dredging industry have long been associated with significant safety risks, such as falls and musculoskeletal injuries due to awkward working postures and the need for lifting. Jan De Nul’s latest cutter head staircase design addresses these challenges by offering a more straightforward and safer solution.

Boskalis eliminates risk of implosion with new design for water box

Alongside pumping sand, managing the water level in the landfill is an important aspect of a dredging project. A water box, a metres-high structure in which planks can be positioned manually to keep the water at the desired level, is indispensable for this work. Boskalis recently won the Safety Award of the International Association of Dredging Companies (IADC) for its new, modular and, above all, safer design that eliminates the risk of incidents.

Finding innovative solutions to improve safety

When individual employees, teams and companies view everyday processes and situations through a continuous lens of safety, they can each contribute to making all aspects of operational processes, whether on water or land, safer. For the 2023 Safety Awards, IADC's Safety Committee received nine submissions. Each one is assessed on five different categories; sustainability; level of impact on the industry; simplicity in use; effectiveness; and level of innovation.

Building a proactive safety culture within a marine contractor organisation

It is hard to imagine a time when safety was not deemed important, when Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was not used and little was done in the way of prevention. A few decades ago, occupational health and safety was not considered as important for the vast majority of companies. Instead, incidents and emergencies were handled as they occurred, as effectively as possible given the limited technology and resources available. Today, those times have changed. This article explores the progress of health and safety in the dredging industry and QHSSE professionals, Ton van de Minkelis and Christophe Leroy share their experiences in building a proactive safety culture.