Our founder, Jan Hendrik van den Herik, worked as a stonemason on the reconstruction of the port of Rotterdam immediately after World War II. Large parts of the city and ports had been destroyed and many quays and banks had to be repaired.
Expansion of activities
In 1946, he decided to work independently and several stonemasons joined him. Over the years, the company’s activities expanded to include raising, sinking, dumping, dredging and its own explosives detection department. In 1971 Jan Hendrik van den Herik left the company and his son-in-law Arie Struijk took over. Anno now, the company is still fully owned by the Struijk – Van den Herik family. The family is actively involved in the company and especially in the employees.
At van den Herik, we take good care of our people as well as our environment. And we are proud, proud of our work, our colleagues and our corporate culture. Colleagues, clients or suppliers, everyone is welcome.
People feel at home at our
“We are social and have an eye for safe and sustainable operations. We look at the long term, do not like waste and feel partly responsible for the world we leave behind for generations to come,” said Jan Huijbers and Isolde Struijk.
Our hardware
Like our employees, our equipment is also very diverse, and we are proud of that too. Matching our projects, we have production equipment such as crane barges and pontoons, a stone doser, hopper dredgers and cranes. We also have many types of auxiliary equipment such as survey fleets, hopper barges, pontoons and a multicat. Some of the equipment is seagoing, some is certified for inland shipping and some is for working on or from dry land.
The T.S.H.D. Charlock is a hopper dredger with “clean ship” certification.
We are making our equipment more sustainable. A large part of our fleet is at least equipped with stage V engines. Two ships and one floating crane have already been made electric in the base; they can be powered modularly by stage V or hydrogen generators. They can also be (partially) powered by a battery or theoretically plugged in. We recently added another two brand new electric cranes to our equipment park.
Our in-house technical department is very inventive and innovative. They adapt the ships wherever possible so that we can carry out our projects in the best possible way.
Digitalization and data-driven work
Making more and better use of all the data you collect as a company through data analysis and all the opportunities that further digitization of processes offers also play a daily role for us. By digitizing our projects from the tender and design phase wherever useful, we work more efficiently, reduce costs and can offer extra value to our customers. Within Van den Herik we develop a lot in the areas of automation, GIS, 3D and VR and we also make use of, for example, AI.
For example, we have developed proprietary software to generate the 3D models of stone pours, allowing us to make the step from design to execution much faster. All digital aspects of a project are integrated into a BIM model, giving us a detailed digital twin of reality and design.
Want to know more about our digital innovations? Click here!
