Experience

Benefits

• Specialist advice to ensure minimum crane downtime
• Rental of equipment for a cost effective solution
• Experienced and competent teams to ensure quick delivery.

Challenge

Our customer required to changeout a Gross Overload Protection (GOP) system as part of their five yearly Planned Maintenance Routine (PMR). The cranes design requires that the davit arm is used for the changeout process but on inspection it was condemned due to corrosion.

We were then contracted to plan and conduct a changeout of the davit arm so that the GOP could then be replaced.

A URW-1006 spider crane was selected as the most suitable option for completion of the job as the customer had stipulated that any crane down time should not exceed four continual days.

Solution

• We assessed the following three options for the project and recommended option three, using a spider crane, which was approved by the customer
• The two unviable options were:
  • Scaffold access: construction time was too long which would have resulted in the crane being out of service for at least 14 consecutive days
  • Using the North crane for doing lifts: with the North crane falling about 2m short from the position of the davit arm some scaffolding would still be required and hence the down time too long
• The end solution utilised a combination of a spider crane and a rope access team which did not require any scaffolding to be constructed
• All lifts for the davit arm changeout were performed using the spider crane
• Due to unfavourable weather conditions in November we only had 3 suitable days to conduct the changeout during a two week window so the affected crane was only out of service for three days
• Even though the spider crane hire was longer due to the bad weather conditions this solution meant the minimal down time of crane operations and was the most cost effective solution.

Summary

• Project management
• Rope access services
• Engineering
• Rental of URW-1006 spider crane - 4-off outrigger stands and 32-off timber frame with dimensions 2400mm x 1250mm x 120mm (L x W x H)
• Rental of supporting equipment.