Europe to Asia, via Marr’s
31 January 2019Australian heavy lift tower crane specialist Marr Contracting—known as The Men From Marr’s—have won a globally-competitive tender to help build the 1915 Çannakale Bridge, linking Gallipoli on the European side of the country, with Lapseki on the Asian side. The job will use one of the world’s biggest luffing tower cranes, a Favelle Favco M2480D.
DLSY Joint Venture partners Daelim (Korea), Limak (Turkey), SK E&C (Korea), and Yapi Merkezi (Turkey) won the contract in January 2017 to design, construct and operate the €3bn project for a 16-year period, after which time ownership will be transferred to the Administration, General Directorate of Highways, Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure of Turkey.
DLSY awarded the lifting contract to Marr’s after a competitive tender that saw some of the world’s leading craneage companies submit proposals to be part of the high-profile project. The Australian firm was asked to develop a solution that would decrease the construction time and associated risk for the project. The solution developed allowed the DLSY Joint Venture to adopt a refined construction methodology in line with their vision on how the project needed to be constructed.
Marr Contracting managing director Simon Marr said “This is an exciting project for us—not just in engineering terms but emotionally and culturally as well. Gallipoli holds a unique place in the heart and psyche of both the Australian and Turkish people [the 1915 in the name of the bridge memorialises the WW1 battle], and for us to work alongside Turkish engineers and construction teams on building this significant legacy project is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we are delighted to be selected to undertake this demanding package of work.”
DLSY deputy project manager Alper Alemdaroglu said: “As DLSY Joint Venture, we are pleased to award the contract to The Men From Marr’s for their world leadership and technical competence in heavy lifting tower cranes for a Project on such a scale. No matter the distance between Turkey and Australia, the crew is always with us whenever we need technical support. That’s why we can conveniently mention Marr’s as one of our valuable solution partners.”
Marr’s started work on engineering plans for the project in January 2018 and are expected to be on site from July 2019 for an estimated 14 months, with responsibility to design the crane supports and ties, supply the support ties and cranes, install and commission the cranes, climb and operate the cranes during the construction of the bridge towers and dismantle of the cranes on completion of the build.
