Luyckx provides excellent service to Jan De Nul’s Hitachi fleet

A major earthmoving project managed and executed by Jan De Nul Group is relying on the support of Hitachi Construction Machinery (Europe) NV (HCME) and local dealer Luyckx. The contractor has four large excavators (an EX1200-6, ZX870LCR-5, ZX690LCH-7 and ZX490LCH-6) and four medium excavators (three ZX350LC-6s and a ZX225USLC-6) that are responsible for the excavation of one million cubic metres of materials over a nine-month period on the site at Trois-Ponts, Liège.

These are being used to: raise the height of a reservoir – that forms part of the Coo-Trois-Ponts Hydroelectric Power Station – by 3m; stabilise the surrounding dikes by reducing the gradient from 66.67% to 50%; and ultimately increase the capacity of the reservoir by 7.5%. To keep on track, the site operates from 7am until 6pm, Monday to Thursday, allowing any service and repair work on the equipment to be carried out on Fridays.

High level of service

This is when Luyckx’s dedicated team of field service engineers can provide any routine maintenance, scheduled servicing and Hitachi Genuine Parts. “The biggest benefit of running a Hitachi fleet is definitely the excellent service provided by our dealer, Luyckx,” says Kris De Backer, Jan De Nul’s Technical Supervisor.

“If there’s an issue with any of the large excavators, it costs us money because the dump trucks – and the whole process – will come to a stop. Therefore, reliability is the key. Fortunately, we also have a very good relationship with Luyckx, due to the high level of service and short lines of communication.

“In addition, the quality of the service from Hitachi’s European Parts Centre in Oosterhout is excellent. We insist on the supply of Hitachi Genuine Parts for the durability, reliability and the resale value of the machines. This is important because our machines are kept on the fleet indefinitely and there are no rules on when they will be bought, sold or replaced. Some machines have 10-12,000 hours before they are moved on, but this will depend on a number of factors, such as their condition.”

User-friendly data

Jan De Nul also utilises the ConSite data report service that summaries the information on the Global e-Service fleet management platform for each of the Hitachi excavators. Kris explains: “We like using ConSite because you don’t have to be a specialist to read and understand the data to gain an overview of the machines. In particular, we check the availability and fuel consumption, which is important due to increased fuel prices – they have more than doubled in the past year!

“ConSite can also help us to optimise the performance of the hydraulic system – and the operators, by showing them for example how to improve the swing motion of their machine. They never complain about the Hitachi machines or request that we should buy any other brands. In fact, they say that Hitachi makes the best large excavator in the market.”

The quality of the support provided by Luyckx and HCME may also be evidenced by the performance of Jan De Nul’s fleet, as Job Site Manager Bert Dierick explains, “Excavators are the key to the production on this site and they are working well. They are strong, reliable and the level of availability is very high.”