Boom Logistics (Victoria):?Winner, over 60t

Boom engineered and executed the installation of a conveyor at Australian Paper’s Maryvale Paper Mill in Gippsland, Australia.

The conveyor was 97.5m long and weighed 101t. It needed to be lifted and placed on top of two 30m stacker towers. Boom had to engineer lift points, lift lugs and slinging techniques. The end-to-end alignment could not exceed +/- 250mm in x and y axes, or the lightweight structure could fail. In addition, one leg was not self-supporting and required two cranes to hold it in place as the conveyor was lifted on top.

Boom lifted the conveyor in two sections. The first lift, of a 69.5m, 73t section would take six cranes in total: three large cranes tandem lifting the conveyor, two further cranes holding the V-shaped leg in place, and a sixth lifting the tension bracing. The other part of the conveyor, a 25m, 28t section, was carried out later. During the first lift, the large cranes raised the conveyor directly above the boom head of the other cranes. A lift director controlled the operation with a dedicated radio frequency, and supervised four riggers positioned on each axis of the lift.

Patterson Crane Hire:?Winner, under 60t

A Terex Demag AC 30 drilled piles and lifted loads to install an inclinator, a one-person escalator, on the side of a hill in Kildrummie Court, Sorrento, Victoria. First, the crane had to fit through a 3.5 sq m drive to reach the site. Then, Patterson attached a 200kg triangle on the boom tip that it had custom fabricated. From that it hung a 700kg, 15m-long triangular truss. The auger motor weighed another 300kg. Hydraulic oil came via a hose from an excavator parked at the bottom of the hill. The crane dug two 600m diameter holes to a depth of 4.6m. The first hole was dug at 14m radius, the second at 17m radius (to a total depth of 19m beneath the crane). The digging was carried out by radio remote control. The team used the crane’s 90% rated capacity indicator to know when to stop the auger and remove the dirt. The job took Patterson, Rosebud Engineering and Rod Cull of Artform Builders 10 days.

Tutt Bryant: Runner up, over 60t

Melbourne’s Southern Star

Observation Wheel is supported on each side by a three-legged stand (tripod) joined at the top by a capital. Each of the 60m legs weigh about 75t each, and were fabricated and delivered to site in two halves for final assembly and painting on site.

After several weeks of computer-aided planning with Alfasi Steel Constructions, Tutt Bryant’s Demag CC2800-1 performed the lifts from a fixed, piled pad, with 96m of main boom and 300t of superlift counterweight. Tutt Bryant’s Demag raised the legs from horizontal while a smaller Alfasi Sumitomo walked the bottom end up. The other tripod legs were raised in the same way.

Once the inner hub was assembled on the ground, the Demag raised it to 67m high. The CC2800-1 placed the 152t wheel at 99% of its capacity.

The final lifts for the CC2800-1 on this project were the seven spokes. Although weighing relatively little, 27t each, each spoke had to be installed at a different elevation and orientation.

The CC2800-1 has been removed from site and is in transit to its next project in Western Australia. It will be transported from Melbourne to Western Australia using 45 trucks.

Gillespie Crane Services:?Runner up, under 60t

A 7t Kobelco RK70 rough terrain crane lifted in 450t of stone for a reinforcing wall on a steep bank in Brookvale, NSW for client NMK Australia. The crane had to fit into a 3m wide concrete storm canal behind terraced houses. Gillespies plated out the base of the canal and ­negotiated several tight bends

that required multi-axle steering. ­During the first stage of work, the crane had hardly any freedom to slew. In the second half of the project, on a different section of the bank, Gillespies jacked up the crane’s outriggers on timber ­platforms so it could slew above the confines of the wall.

One day, heavy rain fell in the Brookdale area. The team ­decided to take the crane out. Only hours later, water more than a metre high was flowing through the canal. The project finished weeks early and without any damage to the wall or canal.