Sarens’ quick bridge lift

Belgian crane service company Sarens used the 3800 for the job as the only crane in its fleet capable of completing the project, which involved the installation of a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the A4 Autoroute near Schiltigheim, in Alsace.

Sarens did not have a permit for a heavy-load transport to enable the company to transport a crane with sufficient capacity to the site, says project manager Joost Elsen. To address this, the 'Quick Connection' feature of the 3800 was employed, providing straightforward disassembly and re-assembly of the crane into two parts, reducing the required transport weight.

A total of 56 transport vehicles were employed, each of which were required to travel in reverse along a narrow gravel access road for around 1km to access the site.

For the lift of the 162t bridge section at a radius of 40m, the Superlift 3800 crane was used with an SSL1 configuration, a 54m main boom, and 325t of counterweight. To prevent the 65m-long load from swinging when lifted it was slung to a spreader, enabling the component to be lifted to a height of 20m.

The main boom was then raised to reduce the working radius to 29m, to enable the counterweight radius to be reduced to 11m, making the crane configuration compact enough to turn 180º in its restricted working area and position the bridge over the motorway.

The crane then travelled around 12m under load to the final destination.