Cover Story Breakbulk & Project Cargo
Larger asset owners’ focus on high-value projects leaves opportunities for local transport providers. Allelys documentation from a partner, and we are managing the operation rather than merely supervising it,” Hennig said.
The company has seen substantial growth as a result.“ When I joined [ in 2017 ], we were around 24 people worldwide. Now we’ re 63,” he noted.
Kevin Kwateng, founder and CEO of engineering firm Project Logistics Engineering Solutions, told the Journal of Commerce that this shift is the reason his company exists.
“ In project logistics, one conventional industry usually carries the market while the others sit stagnant,” he said.“ This is the first time I have seen all of them running at full capacity at once. Mining, hydro, construction, wind, nuclear. And new, very demanding industries are emerging alongside them. Battery storage and data centers are just two.”
“ While this has improved supply chain resilience, it has also created a more complex operating environment.”
Kwateng said this has exposed the criticality of project logistics; that was not the case before.
“ Clients understand logistics directly affects construction timelines and budgets,” he said.“ A project can stall for months because one critical piece cannot get a permit.”
Risks increasing
“ As a result, adaptive engineering capability has become an increasingly important component of successful project execution,” he said.
AAL is seeing customers engage transport engineering expertise much earlier in the project lifecycle to identify potential risks, evaluate route and handling constraints, optimize transportation solutions, and align stakeholders before cargo movements commence.
Roles redrawn
This changing environment is also helping to redefine the role of specialist engineering in the project sector. Independent engineering firms are increasingly bridging the gap between expectations and capabilities as cargo becomes larger and more complex, just as execution capability becomes less uniform across the different markets.
For dteq, that shift has become a growth driver.“ What we’ re doing more and more is producing the engineering for execution rather than verifying provided
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While there are inherent risks in planning, risks related to assets and people are increasing.
“ Try to get a railcar today, forget about it. Try to book a rigging team and you will be told they are booked for months,” Kwateng said.“ That is not normal.”
As a result, customers who used to hold the negotiating power are losing the upper hand, and they are now relying on relationships and higher pricing just to get served.
Engineering is the only thing that addresses multiple schedule risks at once, Kwateng said.
“ It tells you what could go wrong early enough to do something about it, and it tells you what equipment and what crews the move actually requires, which is what lets you reserve them before someone else does,” he said.
It has become more expensive to skip that step than to pay for it, leading companies to build that capacity internally or source it externally.
That scarcity is driving acquisitions in the sector, such as CEVA’ s acquisition of Fagioli, Mammoet’ s takeover of ALE, and purchases by Barnhart and Bay Crane.
“ The equipment and the manpower to do this work do not exist in the volume the market needs.” Kwateng said.“ Nobody goes to school for this industry. There is no pool of trained people waiting to come in. Everyone learns on the job and the learning curve is steep.
“ Buying the competition is faster than buying equipment and training people up,” he added.
email: carly. fields @ spglobal. com
September 2026 | Journal of Commerce 9