Engineer who helped build the Maqta Bridge

Erik van Sabben, a Dubai-based engineer whose expertise in the heavy lifting and transport industry placed him at the forefront of the rapid development in the Gulf over the past decade, has died. A keen motorcycle rider, he was killed in an accident near Dhaid on Jan 16, just two weeks short of his 37th birthday. Born in Vlissingen, The Netherlands, Mr van Sabben had lived in the Gulf on and off for 12 years. While an undergraduate, he worked as a trainee for Mammoet Gulf in Dubai, a specialist heavy lifting company, which he joined after graduating. He spent the next decade in Dubai, and briefly, Abu Dhabi.

Latterly, as a project manager for TTS International, an "extreme transportation" company that specialises in moving large and complex objects, he worked most recently on the assembly of pedestrian bridges for the Dubai Metro. Earlier in his career he was involved in the installation of Abu Dhabi's Maqta Bridge. The pre-fabricated structure, assembled offsite, was floated to its final destination by barge, contained within a specially reinforced super-structure, with a total weight of 2,500 tonnes. It was a hazardous exercise: the barge only just passed under the Mussafah Bridge with 15cm to spare, its hull at times a bare 10cm from the seabed.

Mr van Sabben returned briefly to The Netherlands to work for Jumbo Shipping in the mid-2000s, but was keen to return Dubai and a lifestyle that suited his passion for off-road driving, camping and riding his motorcycle. His colleagues remember him as a workaholic whose chief enjoyment derived from meeting the imaginative challenges of his job. His friends described him as a gentle, genial character. He travelled widely for work, in Sudan, Yemen and Iran and East Africa, but spent his holidays visiting the children from his first marriage, Max and Yenna, in The Netherlands. He was married a second time, to Alenoosh.

Mr van Sabben was born on Jan 31, 1972, and died on Jan 16. *The National