Born in Madrid, Miguel Flórez de la Colina joined Mammoet’s Spanish operation in 1998, a company he stayed with for over 15 years. From 2014, he worked for heavy lifting and exceptional transport company Siladen Solutions who have acted as agents for Wagenborg Nedlift, Roll-Lift and Hareket, among others.
Miguel also teaches construction and lifting to civil engineering students at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid where he himself studied, a role that he will retain while working for ESTA. He took over as ESTA Director from long-standing predecesor Ton Klijn on July 1.
Here he explains how he plans to support the next stage in ESTA’s development and build on Ton’s legacy.
You are taking over at a time of intense regulatory activity in Brussels. What do you see as ESTA’s single most urgent policy priority over the next 12–18 months, and why?
The clear, main aim is to see the revisions to the Weights and Dimensions Directive and the Military Mobility Package over the line. We are very close to success – but not there yet. If it is delivered as currently promised, this could be transformative for our industry.
That is our absolute priority now – but then there will be the issue of how the new rules and regulations will be enforced. We have been talking to a large number of MEPs and officials and it is clear that our proposals have strong support and that the will is there for reform.
But there will without doubt be some hiccoughs along the way. The often-slow speed of permit acquisition will, I am sure, continue to be an issue with some countries remaining reluctant to make their bureaucracies more efficient.
Also, the infrastructure situation is very serious in many countries, as the recent debates about our military requirements have shown. Even more problematic is that many authorities do not know the extent of the problem – they have no proper information about the status of their infrastructure.
Rectifying this will be very difficult and will take time, infrastructure planning (or lack of it) has been a problem for 30 years or more.
The authorities also need to understand that you can’t separate military and civil use – the majority of military heavy transports are carried out by civilian companies.
We also need to keep progressing our European Crane Operators Licence and developing the European Trailer Operator Licence – both projects that my predecessor Ton Klijn will keep working on.
ESTA has long campaigned for harmonisation of abnormal transport permitting across Europe. Realistically, how far is the EU from achieving meaningful standardisation, and what would a “good outcome” look like from your perspective?
We are closer than ever to achieving a level of European harmonisation in terms of heavy transport standards. The directive is not finalised yet and is still in the process of trilogue negotiations, but we remain optimistic that the core of the document will remain unchanged, at least as far as the measures we have been calling for are concerned.
Many people have been lobbying Brussels to cut regulatory burdens. While we might agree with the sentiment, we need to be careful that we do not make current situation worse for European industry.
Rather than no regulation, we need good, efficient and harmonized regulation. That is what we require from Brussels. The danger is that if we have no regulation in some sectors, then regulatory control reverts to national or local governments which will create a chaotic free-for-all, and significantly weaken the single market, to the benefit of Europe’s international competitors.
We need agreed, Europe-wide regulations that are accepted and followed by all. This will make European industry and the work of our members safer, more efficient and better able to compete internationally.
To illustrate the problem, I have seen a special transport that took five days to travel 20 km because every town and village along the route had a different regulation about the time of day it would be allowed to pass. It was a costly and bizarre situation, and it is essential that we do not replicate this state of affairs across Europe.
SPMTs and modular transport systems are increasingly central to moving ever-larger industrial cargoes. Do you think existing EU and national frameworks adequately recognise these technologies, or are they still being treated as “special cases” in regulation?
The growing use of SPMTs, sometimes by inexperienced rental companies, means that the industry and regulators need to adapt and respond to the changes. This is why ESTA is working on a training scheme for SPMT operators and also why we are developing a series of linked best practice guides for Modular Hydraulic Suspended Trailers and SPMTs.
It is clear that the present situation is unsustainable. Apart from in Italy, people with no experience at all can currently operate SPMTs – and in Italy you simply need an HGV licence.
It is not just the operators that often do not have the necessary experience but also the engineering departments of many companies.
The situation has become notably worse in recent years as many local authorities have reduced their in-house engineering expertise. As a result, heavy transport companies often have to survey the structures on their routes themselves – which is hugely inefficient as the same route can be surveyed multiple times, once for each load that passes.
A further complication is that regulators and their engineering departments do not appreciate that modern modular hydraulic trailers spread the loads on the roads and can therefore in some circumstances present less risk that might otherwise be the case for a load of the same weight.
So there is a lot to discuss. We hope that our best practice work will help raise standards when it is published later this year.
Digital permitting systems are often presented as a step-change for efficiency. In practice, adoption across Europe has been fragmented. What is preventing faster rollout, and should ESTA be more forceful in pushing for mandatory adoption?
Digital permitting systems hugely benefit the industry and our clients. Reform proposals are contained in the current revisions to the Weights and Dimensions Directive (see above).
Those revisions include a ‘one stop shop’ per country for permits, standardised permit application forms, use of electronic permits and permitting systems to be available in all EU languages.
A single common digital permitting system for Europe as a whole is probably too ambitious and too big a step at present. But the measures currently on the table would represent significant progress – as would the planned adoption of the standard Europe-wide SERT documentation for abnormal load vehicle registration, a move that ESTA has supported for many years.
From your experience in heavy transport operations, where do regulators most often misunderstand the operational realities of abnormal loads—route planning, escorting, infrastructure limits, or something else?
It is not that regulators have misunderstood us, more that they have often not appreciated our significance. In purely economic terms, we are a small industry, but we have an outsized impact on the efficiency and effective operation of European industry as a whole.
That situation is beginning to change and we are now often contacted by departments in Brussels and also, through our members, national governments asking for input into policy discussions.
Up to now, where new infrastructures are planned, rarely have the needs of heavy transport been taken into account. Our job is simply to do our best to make politicians and regulators aware of the importance of our industry and to ensure that their policies are coordinated.
For example, you can’t have a situation where a central government is promoting the wind industry and local councils are doing all they can to hinder the transport of the wind turbines.
Having worked within major heavy lift and transport organisations, how will that hands-on industry background shape your approach to leading ESTA?
As ESTA continues to grow, the challenge will be to retain our character and strength while at the same time increasing the resources we have available to deliver for our members.
ESTA relies on direct input from its members – and their members – which means a lot of the work we do on best practice guides and policy briefings is written by people that know the industry from direct personal experience, and that is a great plus.
The downside is that we are therefore relying on people who have full time jobs, limited time to give us and are often travelling regularly to projects across Europe and beyond. How we increase our in-house resources without weakening that direct connection to the industry we serve will be a strategic challenge for the future, but one we are looking forward to.
ESTA sits at the intersection of logistics, construction, energy transition and defence infrastructure. Which of these sectors do you expect will most strongly shape demand for abnormal transport capacity over the next decade?
We are not economists and are not in the business of predicting markets. Having said that, we talk to industry leaders the whole time to keep abreast of how the industry is changing and the trends and issues that might affect our members. Those issues might be electrification of cranes and transport; automation and technology; sustainability; renewable energy; the future of the oil and gas markets…and more.
That information then feeds into what our priorities should be and where we should direct our limited resources.
Finally, what does success look like for ESTA under your leadership—both in terms of policy influence in Brussels and tangible improvements for operators on the ground?
Defining success is straightforward. In the short term, getting the revised Weights and Dimensions Directive and the Military Mobility Package approved, and developing ECOL and ETOL, our training and licencing schemes. In the medium term, to ensure that the powers in Brussels understand our industry, consult us on a regular basis and take heed of our advice. And overall, to be supported by a growing and supportive membership.
From a personal point of view, taking over from Ton is a unique opportunity to make a positive difference in an industry I love – and that is what I plan to do.