Lampson Australia boasts more than 75 years industry experience providing heavy lift and transport services. Managing Director John Lee has been with the organisation for almost 30 years, and provides insights into the business and his career with Lampson.
“I joined Lampson as a Project Engineer straight out of university. I’d finished my engineering degree, and this was my first job. Obviously, I was very green when I started, and it’s not until I gained some experience that I realised just how green I was. An industry like this is very specialised,” said John.
“I was just a ‘post-grad’ and I stayed as a project engineer for what felt like a long time, but in that time I’d worked all across Australia, I’d been overseas and I’d worked with Lampson on the biggest and the smallest jobs, the experience was just amazing.
“It was such a steep learning curve, and it was quite a few years until I made senior project engineer. I was in this role for about seven years, and then in 2012, I was promoted to managing director. Learning the business from the ground up has stood me in good stead.”
Today, Lampson is primarily a dry hire crane company, providing a range of equipment that supports the fleet of heavy lift cranes that work on construction of modularisation-type project work, explains John.
“That type of heavy lift construction work is our main focus, and the fleet is designed to service this type of demand. The smaller capacity cranes go out on general hire which helps fill the gaps between the big projects.
“We also provide specialised transportation, we offer design and engineering services, and we have jacking and skating capabilities. There’s a bunch of engineering involved in all of these activities, and we have a large engineering department here in Australia and in America to help manage these projects.
“Lampson can help design and engineer the project, hire the heavy lift capabilities to complete the project and we transport the equipment to and from the project. My job is to oversee the business that runs all of that.”
Lampson operates a range of Self Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMTs) which play an integral role in its heavy lift service.
“SPMTs play an important role because they help ‘tie’ a project together, they are often the solution required between the on-road transportation element of a project to the crane and lifting element,” said John.
“You might transport the component to site, but you can’t get it into position for lifting because of the confines of the site. We will move it with the SPMTs to where it can be lifted or even install with the SPMT. They play an important role in the company.
“We also offer on-road transport services, that’s truck-pulled trailers, and we do a lot of ‘ship to site’ installations. We also offer oversize transport services, basically anything in the oversize/over mass market is where we like to operate. We’re not big on general freight because everyone is competing in that space, we specialise in what we do well.”
John said customers feel confident in Lampson’s heavy lift and transport capabilities and rely on the engineering team to design and implement the right solutions.
“Customers outsource their projects to Lampson because they themselves are not experts in heavy lifting and transport, they rely on us. We might have a customer that needs to move a ship loader from a berth and install a new one, for example. They come to us and ask, ‘How do we do it?’ We provide them with multiple options and they select the one that suits them the best,” he said.
Lampson’s lifting capabilities are impressive. The crawler crane fleet runs from 50t capacity right up to 2,600t capacity in Australia.
“We maintain all of our cranes to OEM specification in our workshop facilities. When we get a crane back from a project, we can go right through it, refurbishing as we go, and when it gets to the end of the process, it is just like a new machine. Obviously, not every machine needs this type of overhaul every time.
“We maintain the fleet with major and minor inspections and these are certified by our qualified engineers. We have that in-house ability to inspect and certify our equipment,” said John.
“The maintenance of the cranes needs to be 100 per cent so we are confident the customer won’t have a problem when the crane gets to site. We want to put it out there without question. When we deliver a crane to a project, we sign it over to the customer with confidence the machine is going to operate correctly without any problems. That said, we do have back-up staff for service and maintenance, and we can send people to site quickly if there is an issue,” he said.
Lampson’s Toronto yard, situated just south of Newcastle in New South Wales, features an Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) quarantine bay.
“Our Toronto quarantine bay enables us to import directly from overseas, land our equipment in that quarantine bay, perform all the cleaning, and arrange for the quarantine inspectors to come to our site and inspect the machine. It certainly saves a lot of time and expense when importing equipment. Having the bay helps streamline the process because Australian quarantine laws are so strict,” said John. “We also offer that cleaning service to our customers for import of a range of equipment including excavators and used mining equipment.”
Lampson employs about 100 personnel across the five depots in Australia. Each location has a manager and there are various trades and personnel on site.
“The various teams maintain the equipment in each depot. We provide engineering support from this location and if any of the depots need support, we’ll send engineers or technicians from here.
“We have a tremendous amount of experience in the team, some of the personnel have been here longer than I have,” said John. “We are also investing in the future with an extensive apprenticeship program. It’s amazing to see these youngsters ‘grow their wings’ and some do take flight to other businesses, but we do see many of them return. It’s good for them to get a feel for the industry and see it from another perspective. When they do return, they realise Lampson is the place where good things happen.”
Lampson Australia is a subsidiary of Lampson International which operates through the US and Canada.
“We are part of a large family company, and the family still run and manage the day-to-day operations. We mirror ourselves on the US model – the things they do in the States, we do the same here, it’s very similar,” said John. “You could walk into any Lampson facility across the world and it will have virtually the same feel, you know the equipment, so you could just about go straight to work in any of those places.”
Lampson also operates a fleet of rough terrains and all terrains.
“Our fleet of Grove rough terrains and link belts have capacities ranging from 30t up to 130t. They are a good alternative to a crawler and they are certainly a lot quicker to set up.
“Generally, we’ll put the roughies on the job site first and they’ll be the last to leave. If we send a crawler crane or another configuration of crane to the project, the roughie will unload and help build the crane. They are very versatile, and clients like them because they are simple to operate – you can get them into all sorts of tight spots, put the boom out and go straight to work,” said John.
John talks about the relationship with the local Manitowoc team.
“Grove and Manitowoc have been with us from the very beginning. Most of our equipment is a Manitowoc or Grove brand, and the relationship in the States is the same. It’s a very long-standing relationship and a lot of the equipment operated by Lampson is a Manitowoc brand and that’s because of their quality and reliability.
“They support us in all our endeavors, provide all our spare parts, and with all the things we are trying to do, they’re right there, virtually as a partner. They have been from the beginning,” said John.
“We supply gantry systems as alternative lifting solutions. Sometimes you can’t get a crane or trailer close enough to assist and you need to provide another solution. We operate a broad range of gantry systems, with capacities ranging from 50t up to 2,600t.
“We have jacking systems that range up to 6,000t in capacity, stands and skids and a whole bunch of equipment that supports our operations, as an alternative to lifting with cranes. I think that sets us apart from general crane hire companies or a general transport company. We engineer lifting, transport and jacking solutions for each application, because not every job is the same. You need to take a specialised look at each project; Lampson is good at doing that and has been for more than 75 years.”