Forklift Champions
A team of CERN forklift truck operators has come runner-up in the 2005 French Championships. It is an achievement which has put this professional activity, which plays an essential role at CERN, into the spotlight.
There was never any doubt that CERN played host to the cream of the physics world, top-class engineers and computing experts. However, excellence is to be found in all professional fields. Thus, a team of three handling and transport experts from CERN came runner-up in the French Forklift Championships, which took place in Lyon on 5 October.
The three CERN participants from the TS/IC Group's Logistics Section, Jose Pereira Lages (Leader of the LHC General Services Team at Points 1 and 8), Johann Dhote (Leader of the Team responsible for lowering the magnets at Point SMI2) and Julien Fermanel (a member of the General Services transport and handling team at Point 5), passed six tests in which they had to show dexterity and skill, while attempting to complete them in as short a time as possible. The events included unloading a lorry using a forklift truck, a skills test, a driving-simulator test, a warehousing test and even a questionnaire on safety. In addition to the team result, Jose Pereira was crowned French Champion in the individual unloading event. “This result is all the more gratifying in that one of the events, the warehousing event, is not part of the usual day-to-day CERN activities”, explains Frank Stach, in charge of operations on the DBS Transports contract, who coached the team.
Participation in the competition was re-launched at the CERN Open Day in 2004. “We organised an internal competition in which around fifty of our best handling and transport experts took part. The best among them formed the team which competed in the French Championship”, explains Sylvie Prodon, Leader of the TS/IC Group's Logistics Section. Boosted by the result, six CERN handling and transport experts will be taking part in the discipline's Swiss Championship, which takes place in a month's time.
Beyond the pleasure of taking part in the competition and the motivation the Laboratory's handling and transport experts derive from it, the achievement sheds light on a rather low-profile, but essential professional activity at CERN. The TS/IC Group's Logistics Section employs some fifteen people and some two hundred under contract with DBS. They include travelling-crane and machine operators, drivers, forklift truck operators and other handling and transport experts. They perform duties ranging from transporting small parcels to impressive handling operations for objects that are as delicate as they are massive. They are, for example, spearheading the lowering and installation of the LHC magnets into the tunnel, as well as the turning-over of ATLAS's massive barrel toroid coils and their lowering into the experimental cavern. “At CERN, our teams have to show great flexibility, given that we perform a very diverse range of extremely delicate operations”, explains Sylvie Prodon.
The Section carries out no less than 20,000 heavy transport operations and deals with the delivery of 200,000 parcels every year. In short, delivering on performance is literally all in a day's work for CERN's handling and transport experts.
