This is the last project during my traineeship year within Van Oord. I’m send to a river project in Brazil to work as a superintendent on a project with 3 working and one survey vessel. The flight to Brazil went from Schiphol via Paris and Rio de Janeiro and ended in the hotel in Itajai. The travel started on Saturday night 3.00 and arrived 27 hours later in a hotel where I directly went top bed. After 6 hours of sleep I accompanied a colleague with breakfast and we went to the office. The office is on the eighth floor and looks over the city and the river where we work. For lunch we go to a nice restaurant where you pay the food by kilo. You can take what you want and at the end ... read more

A house in Schijndel A new challenge, I bought a house in my birth town. The house is 60 years old and all needs to be adjusted and renewed. My dad and mom help me together with my friends. We are now already constructing for 3 weeks, the architect is designing the back side. At the end it will be a very nice house. Hope you like my new challange, this old building has manny opertunitys.....you will see Some weeks working, we already see some results. The new solid stairs are placed, the floor is broken and will be moved this saturday. I recieved a a permission to build totally to the back so the two houses will be broken down and a new one will be build at the back. For the extension I have ... read more

for my job at Van Oord i am in Qatar 30th October I flew from Amsterdam via Dubai to Doha in Qatar. After the landing and waiting for my luggage, the Driver picked me up from the airport. After approximately 1 hour we arrived in Ras Lafan. This is an industrial city in the middle of the dessert (impressive to se during the night). Near the project site we have our living camp. Here stay approximately 1300 people that all work on the construction of the breakwater. The first day was a day to get used to the Arabic ways of living and to install in my new home. I would preferred to start working the next morning but it was the weekly day off. The temperatures are during the night around 26 en during ... read more

For my job at Van Oord we had to do some measurements on waterquality near the Limerick tunnel construction. Here are some photos made during this interesting week. On this project the Aegir (cutter suction dredger) was responsible for dredging and deepening in the Shannon River. We only had a short time to participate in this project hopefully in the near future I can work longer a broad. it was intresting to go with a boat in the returnwater basins and measure how the sediment particles sedimentate and clean water could be released in to the river.... read more

With a group of students we went to South Afrika to learn about the bush from ranger Ed De trip was organized by Bushpackers in Hazyview (www.bushpackers.co.za), South Africa, close to the Kruger Nat. Park. Edwin is a passionate game ranger and conservationist. He gives ranger courses and at the moment he is busy with setting up a tented camp in Sabie Sands, a 65.00 ha private Big 5 Game Reserve close to Hazyview. This trip was undertaken after my graduation from the Van Hall Larenstein Institute, my name is Harold van Oorschot and i was 25 years old during this trip.This was my first contact with Africa, it was a great experience. This trip was organized by the Gecko bushpackers lodge (http://www.gecko-bushpackers.co.za/) owned by : Edwin Cruywagen and Francis Hamwyk. Edwin is the head ranger ... read more