Liebherrs on site at Madrid, Spain Calle 30 redevelopment project

The building project, consisting of 15 different stages, was started in September 2004 and is planned to be completed at the beginning of 2007. The scheduled costs for this huge project amount to as much as Eur 5.2 billion. The jobsites cover a total length of 99 km, 56 km of which are tunnels. An estimated total of 600,000 to 700,000 square metres of slurry walls are being installed, covering a length of approx. 26 km and reaching depths between 15 and 45 m.

Up to 100 units of the Liebherr hydraulic crawler crane (HS), lift crane (LR) and piling and drilling rig (LRB) series are working on this project. Further 50 machines are operating on various jobsites in and around Madrid. At the moment this represents the highest concentration of Liebherr crawler cranes in the world.

The majority of these machines belong to the HS series. The hydraulic crawler cranes were specially developed for dynamic applications in heavy-duty construction tasks under extreme environmental conditions, e.g. at temperatures of over 40°C (104°F), in high dust concentrations or for multi-shift operation. They are equipped with engines of up to 670 kW and free-fall winches featuring up to 30 t line pull. Moreover, they excel in their robust and rigid steel structure. Due to the crawler cranes’ versatility they can not only be applied for slurry wall installation but also for simple lifting jobs.

The LR series machines are used for installing reinforcement cages into the slurry excavations, for concreting, placing joints into the trenches, loading and unloading vehicles, assembling machines etc.

The Liebherr piling and drilling rigs of the LRB series featuring an operating weight of up to 140 t complete the range of products. Depending on the required task, various working equipment can be rapidly mounted in order to prepare the machines for other applications.

The machines of the new generation have one outstanding feature, i.e. the possibility of remote diagnosis via GSM service modem. This allows failures to be quickly detected and partly to be repaired directly without requiring the attendance of a service technician.