Tandem lift following cyclone damage

Indian crane hire company Steel Carriers used two of its Tadano all terrains, an AC 1000-9 and an AC 500-1, to lift a steel structure at a cement works in Gujarat, western India. The job was part of a project to repair cyclone damage at the cement plant. One part of the conveyor bridge had been so badly damaged that it had to be completely replaced.

The structure, for a deep pan conveyor, weighed 50 tonnes and measured 50 metres long. It needed to be lifted to a height of 60 metres between two silos at a radius of up to 40 metres.

“It was definitely a job for our most powerful all terrain cranes,” reports Sunil Makad, director of the crane company. “We could have used one of our big Tadano lattice boom crawler cranes for this job but in this case the all terrain cranes proved to be the better option. That’s partly because we could get them to the site quicker, and partly because they were easier to position in the very limited space available at the site.”

It took Steel Carriers three days to transport both cranes and 17 support trucks from its branch in Mumbai to the job site in Gujarat. Once there, Steel Carriers setup the cranes in two days. They set the AC 1000-9 up in the HA SSL configuration using the 100-metre main boom and Sideways Superlift (because there was not enough space at the site to assemble a fly jib). They also set the AC 500 1 up in the WIHI-SSL configuration.

“The differing crane configurations and the fact that they have differing lifting capacities made the tandem lift that much more challenging for the operators to execute,” says Makad.  

The two cranes lifted the load, rotated it by 90 degrees, and set it down in the required position without any problems.

Despite the challenges and complexities involved, Steel Carriers needed only a five-man team for this lift: two crane operators, two assistants and one site manager. Together, without any outside help, they completed the entire operation – from setting the cranes up, to performing the lift, to dismantling the cranes afterwards – in 15 days. “It just goes to show how quickly and efficiently you can get even very difficult jobs done if you have a highly skilled and experienced team and the right cranes,” Makad concludes.