San Diego, California

In Southern California, Bigge Crane and Rigging has been providing an operated and maintained Liebherr LR 1300 crawler crane to assist in the construction of the San Diego New Central Library building. This new nine-storey structure features a unique steel dome at the top, with 26,000lb sail pieces that had to be hoisted individually to create the dome.

Due to the site constraints, Bigge’s sales and engineering team worked hand in hand with the contractor to ensure that the crawler crane could rig in and work inside the busy jobsite. Bigge helped design a crane mat layout, which allowed the ground bearing forces to be minimised, placing the crane closer to the building and reducing the overall radius.

Bigge were also able to use the Liebherr LR 1300 to dismantle a 300ft tower crane at the jobsite, prior to starting work on the dome.

De Kalb, Mississippi

This May, Barnhart Crane and Rigging moved heat exchangers from Bigbee Valley, to their eventual home at a Mississippi Power plant site in Kemper County on Highway 493 near DeKalb. The heat exchangers were first transported by barge. Then they were moved to a Goldhofer Trailer.

The load was 163ft 5in long and ~15ft high and weighed 776,166lb. The trailer was as wide as 22ft during normal travel and expanded to ~30ft when crossing bridges.

The journey was 60 miles through Noxubee and Kemper counties along four different highways.

Green Bay, Wisconsin

Manitowoc cranes, built in Wisconsin, are playing a powerful home game, helping upgrade Lambeau Field, home of local football team the Green Bay Packers. The cranes are lifting structural steel and precast panels for the stadium’s new scoreboards, as well as placing modules for seating, escalators, elevators and more. The Manitowoc 14000 and Manitowoc 11000 crawler cranes are working with a team of Grove all-terrain and rough-terrain cranes on the $143m job site. All the cranes belong to Miron Construction, a Neenah-based general contractor. For the Lambeau Field job, with work at both ends of the stadium, the cranes needed to be able to handle long passes. The Manitowoc 14000 is configured with a 144ft boom and 150ft luffing jib. The Manitowoc 11000 is a 100 USt capacity crawler crane and part of the company’s small crawler line. It is configured with a 170ft boom and 60ft jib.

Aurora, Kentucky

Hall Contracting and Sterett Crane and Rigging carried out speedy repairs to the Eggner’s Ferry Bridge, after it was struck by a cargo ship. In January, a cargo ship struck a section of the Eggner’s Ferry Bridge that crosses the Tennessee River near Aurora, destroying a 322ft (100m) span of the 3,495ft-long bridge. Bridge contractor, Hall Contracting of Louisville, Kentucky, used Terex cranes and paving equipment to construct and pave the new span. With a tight timeframe, the only possible option was building the frame on land and floating it to the bridge site. On site to aid in truss frame construction were two Terex rough terrain cranes, a 55USt RT555-1 and 80USt. The RT555-1 pulled double duty by assisting with the CC2800-1 crane rigging as well as bridge assembly. Owensboro-based Sterett Crane and Rigging provided heavy crawlers, using a Terex C2800-1 and a Kobelco SL-4500R working in tandem. The two crawlers lifted the 640,000lb (290,299kg) span onto a barge and then onto the bridge piers.