On 21 March 2018, the annual Day of the Engineer was held in Groningen, including the presentation of the Prince Friso Prize for the Engineer of the Year. Thereby, as usual, Princess Beatrix and Princess Mabel attended the presentation.
It was an interesting afternoon and evening with the presentation of the Kivi Medal of Honour to Jan v.d. Tempel, both CEO of Ampelmann and director of DOB. Thereby facilitating maintenance and reducing the risk of an accident.He is also founder of a technical education centre: De Oude Bibliotheek (DOB) in Delft.
Jan will also host the next OT lecture at DOB on 19 April, with the theme 'Offshore Wind Made Profitable', and finally speaker at the symposium 'Moving Away From Fossile Fuels' on 1 May at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. The latter is organised i.c.w. the KIVI departments Oil&Gas, Maritime Engineering and Technology, Society and Economics.
The choice for Engineer of the Year went between three candidates, with Nima Tolou eventually winning, with a revolutionary design for the motion mechanism of a watch. Up-and-coming talent was also honoured: ing. Korné Walhout, general director at Zeeland-based engineering firm Walhout Civil BV. Involved, among other things, in the salvage of the 'Costa Concordia' and a rescue operation on St Maarten after the storm. So here too, a link with the offshore sector.
In short, it was a great day for the offshore community, with Jan v.d. Tempel already nominated once for the Ir of the Year award in 2008, but then narrowly losing to Saskia Rijtema, now COO of Heerema. And then Allard van Hoeken (CEO Oceans of Energy) also won once in 2015. A nice share and recognition of engineers in our field.
We are grateful to Jan for his contribution to the offshore sector, congratulate him on his award and thank him for his contributions to the lectures.
