A long reach to take down tower

The weekend job took place in one of the busiest shopping streets in the city.  Bovis, the lead contractor, involved local police to help with crowd control, ease traffic congestion and increase tower crane safety measures.

Martin Potterton, BLL project director at Grand Arcade said: “The cranes had to be dismantled to schedule and that meant carrying out the operation at peak times within a public city centre location.  With so many members of the public in the vicinity we took the decision to involve the police to ensure that the public were safely guided around the operation.  Traditionally it is the contractors who are responsible for the safety of the public but with the help and experience of the police in crowd control and traffic management, it allowed us more of an opportunity to concentrate on the job in hand.  In addition we closed footpaths every time the mobile crane was under load to alleviate any risk from uncontrolled loads. We ensured there was no double handling of loads, despite having two mobile cranes on site.”

The LTM 1500 was configured with 90t of counterweight.  It had a 68m boom and 21m fly jib fixed at a 40° offset for the work.  During the job, it lifted an 8t load at 50m radius.  The assist crane was a Liebherr LTM1080/1, in the livery of Crane Services, a company Ainscough bought in 2007.

Upon completion in early 2008, Grand Arcade will offer 41,400 sq m of retail space.  The project is being developed by the Grand Arcade Partnership, a joint venture between Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd (USS) and Grosvenor.  Bovis Lend Lease is the main contractor at Grand Arcade.  Design architect is Chapman Taylor and structural/civil engineer is Beattie Watkinson.