Every year R&D employees from throughout the Damen Group meet for a daylong meeting: the Damen Innovation, Development & Research Event. It is the opportunity for everyone to get to know each other better, to share inspiring stories, and to find out who is doing what within Damen’s R&D projects.

This year’s ID&R Event, which took place on 28 January, will be remembered as a very special edition. For the first time in its eleven years of existence, because of coronavirus restrictions, the meeting took place online, using Teams to be precise. Moreover, this time it did not take a whole day, but a few hours.

At first, it took some getting used to not seeing each other virtually instead of in person. But, all in all, it was a very successful webinar, recalls Joep Broekhuijsen. “The R&D Managers had put together an appealing programme with some interesting speakers,” says Joep. “In his welcome speech, Jan-Wim Dekker of the Executive Board of Damen Shipyards Group discussed the great importance of research for our group. We also had a guest speaker – Paul Grootendorst from Dassault Systèmes – the software supplier that Damen is working with in the field of development of design and analysis software. For, among others, the F126 project.”

Before the Damen Innovation, Development & Research Webinar 2021, all participants received a nice magazine in which all published articles (including from Damen Nieuws) about Damen’s R&D activities from 2020 were bundled. Before the Damen Innovation, Development & Research Webinar 2021, all participants received a nice magazine in which all published articles (including from Damen Nieuws) about Damen’s R&D activities from 2020 were bundled.

Paul Grootendorst told the participants about the unprecedented possibilities of Simulation Driven Design with the help of 3DEXPERIENCE. This is a platform developed by Dassault Systèmes in which employees, partners and customers of a company can work (together) on 3D designs and in which all associated business processes are linked.

As a friendly gesture, the approximately one hundred participants in the Damen ID&R Webinar had received a package with a beer, soda and cocktail nuts in the week running up to the event. These were intended for the traditional ‘after meeting drinks’, which this year also happened virtually. How did that go? “The great thing about Teams,” says Joep, “is that you can also create separate meeting rooms. Groups of five people were randomly assigned to a separate room to socialise and share knowledge. After ten minutes, you were taken out of that digital space and you were put in another room with other people. You could then join in with what they were talking about….”

In short, it was a special meeting that many will remember for a long time to come.

Beforehand, all participants received a nice magazine in which all published articles (for example from Damen Nieuws) about Damen’s R&D activities from 2020 were bundled. This R&D Synopsis 2020 was very popular.