Crane Safety

At the beginning of July a convoy of low-loaders pulled out of the Liebherr plant at Ehingen in Germany, carrying the components of an LR 11350 crawler crane. The destination was the Basque city of Vitoria-Gasteiz in northern Spain. That was where the new crane, owned by Usabiaga, made its first lift.

The first unit has now been delivered to German based crane company Mayer headquartered in the town of Burgberg in the south of the country. The company put the crane straight to work on a difficult and complicated job, replacing the starting ramps of one of the two ski jumps in Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps.

Liebherr has extended the on-site fully rigged mobility of its 600 tonne LR 1600/2-W narrow-track crawler crane. The crane can now move with up to 108 metres of main boom and a 12-metre fixed jib.

The following is a brief selection of safety considerations, more information on this subject can be found in the relevant BS Codes of Practice . A tower crane should only be erected or dismantled and tested by competent persons, i.e. an engineer and erection crew trained in the erection and dismantling of that type of tower crane.

A CRACK in a crane at Victoria’s troubled desalination plant forced the evacuation of 120 workers yesterday. The workers were sent home at 2.30pm on full pay after the fault was detected in a crane in the pumping station area of the plant. Thiess Degremont spokeswoman Serena Middleton said the workers were evacuated for safety reasons.

The new transmission tower, built on the commercial dock owned by Superior Aggregates in Michipicoten Harbour, has been given a three-kilometer lift into Dore Lake, where high winds recently toppled the former tower, vital for power from Ontario to Manitoba. A skycrane helicopter, used to replace cranes in hard-to-reach areas, was flown in from the West Coast. It has a capacity to lift 20,000 pounds.

The Liebherr LR 1600/2 crawler crane operated by US crane rental company Bigge Crane and Rigging Co. has been hard at work on a wind farm in Ohio. With a main boom 108 metres in length and a fixed jib of 12 metres (the SL3F system), the crane recently lifted a Games G90 machine housing weighing 75 tonnes onto the top of a 100 metre tower.

A large loader crane overturned in Heerde, the Netherlands today after one of its outrigger beams snapped. The boom came down onto the roof of a house killing one of the men working on the roof.

truck crane overturned in Shreveport, Louisiana yesterday, dropping its boom into the lobby of a retirement home. The telescopic crane, a four axle Grove truck crane, said to be owned and operated by Joyce Crane, apparently had around 30 metres of its main boom extended and was installing an air conditioning unit when it lost stability.

For nearly a year, it’s become a familiar landmark, visible from most points in south Glenwood Springs. JE Dunn Construction’s massive, royal-blue tower crane may be the tallest contraption in the sky. But don’t get too used to seeing it.