Damen Shipyards Group has appointed Marc van Heyningen as its chief operations officer (COO), effective April 1.

Van Heyningen is a MSc in Civil Structural Engineering at Delft University and has spent the vast majority of his career working for Fluor Corporation in various general and operations management positions in, for example, The Netherlands, The UK, India and the US.

His last role was vice president of operations based at Fluor’s headquarters in Dallas, Texas. “I very much look forward to joining the Damen team and working to strengthen project execution and quality of delivery.”

He succeeds Jan-Wim Dekker, who was named Damen’s chief commercial officer on January 1.

“We warmly welcome Marc on board,” said CEO Arnout Damen. “With his experience and background, he is certainly able to take operational excellence within our company to an even higher level.”