The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration contracted Barnhart to lift and secure Space Shuttle Launch Pad A at the Kennnedy Space Center in Florida so that other contractors could work underneath the structure to reinforce it with additional steel and perform a corrosion treatment, and then lower it down again.
The 170ft (51m) high, 80ft (24m) radius structure had never been weighed, and engineered lift points had never been identified. Each of the six jacking locations chosen by NASA posed a different engineering problem. Furthermore, NASA was uncertain about the amount of load the foundation could withstand.
Barnhart used Modular Lift Towers and hydraulic jacks to lift and secure the structure. It held the structure at two different elevations, one at 124ft high and one at 103ft high. On several occasions, the rigging team had to shut down the job because of lightning storms.
After successfully completing the project, Barnhart and NASA concluded the launch structure weighed about 5 million pounds (2267t), of which Barnhart lifted about half.
