Berry was tasked to lift the fragile 12.5t bus shelter from its roadside location, relocate it to a storage area half a mile away, and eventually return it to another location at the retail village. It had to be moved to accommodate important roadworks at its original position.
Berry provided a crane operator, lift supervisor and two riggers, while the client supplied a structural engineer and two carpenters. Special steel beams were manufactured and placed underneath the structure, creating a cradle for the load as it was lifted.
Before the lift, the ground was dug from beneath the bus shelter in two positions to allow contractors to slide two beams lengthways underneath the structure. Jacks were used to lift the large beams with the shelter sitting on them to allow four smaller beams to be slid widthways underneath the larger ones. Fabricators then installed lifting bolts onto the ends of the smaller beams to attach the shackles.
Integral to the operation were three spreader beams from below-the-hook equipment manufacturer Modulift, an MOD 24 and two MOD 12s.
Berry used the MOD 24 spreader beam at 5.5m, while the pair of MOD 12 beams was used at 4m. Berry attached two slings at each of the four corners of the rig to connect to shackles and the steel beams beneath the bus shelter.
The crane used 30m of main boom, which provided 22.8t capacity at 6m radius.
Greg Allen, contract lift operations manager at Berry Cranes, said: “The biggest issue was that the bus shelter was originally built in situ during the 1960s so no-one could know how stable it was until we lifted it. Further, the lift required extensive planning as the location gets extremely busy during hours when the retail park is open to shoppers. Combining expertise and quality equipment, we were able to complete the project safely and efficiently, only closing a small area of the car park to complete the lift and escort the load away from the site on specialised transport.”
Berry Cranes has recently lifted a 27t yacht using a Modulift MOD 50.
