Celebrating industry innovation

Innovation is demonstrated throughout this issue. In News, for example, we see the capacity of Liebherr's latest narrow track crawler crane, aimed at wind work, jump from the 600 to 700 tonne capacity class compared to its predecessor yet the crane's body width increases by just ten centimetres. That's innovation.

In our Renewables feature heavy lift specialist Mammoet devises not one but two new lifting techniques for installing a wind farm converter platform, while marine start-up Tugdock partners with one of the world's leading lifting and transportation companies, Sarens, to facilitating increased dry dock capacity through its buoyancy bag technology. This means, using the system, ports currently without the capacity to handle the latest generation of offshore wind farm components could now be able to. That's innovation.

And in our Heavy Lifting feature read how Mammoet and Marr Contracting have halved completion times on two very different projects. Mammoet halved shutdown times on a refinery in Saudi Arabia using heavy lift crawler cranes and its own ring crane; while Marr has sped up the construction of data centres in Australia by reducing the number of critical path lifts thanks to its bespoke fleet of heavy lift luffing tower cranes. That's innovation.

Having the right tools for the job clearly brings benefits. But, without having your own bespoke kit, what's the best way to source the right crane for the job? Digital disruptor MyCrane believes its online crane procurement service saves brings the benefits of digitisation to both crane rental firms and those looking to rent from them. Now that's innovation!

I hope you enjoy this, dare I say 'innovative', issue.