Construction work is underway at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, USA, where contractors are using two Potain tower cranes from Manitowoc to support major additions to the active medical campus.
The project comprises a new six-storey parking garage and an expansion to the main hospital building, including a skywalk linking the two structures.
Given the limited laydown space available within the hospital’s operational grounds, project teams selected tower cranes to reduce reliance on ground-level staging and minimise site congestion.
The objective, according to the contractors, is to carry out construction without disrupting ongoing hospital activities.
Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service was engaged to manage the sequencing of deliveries, assembly, and dismantling to ensure daily hospital operations remain unaffected.
The company is responsible for all aspects of crane installation, operation, and removal, providing in-house lift planning, logistics, and crane operators, as well as supplying its own mobile crane for tower erection. Location studies and scheduling are handled internally.
Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service vice president Nathanael Reynolds said: “Our job was to take complexity off the table. By handling assembly, dismantling, lift planning, trucking, and operators, we give both contractors a single point of accountability and the confidence their cranes would perform exactly as planned.”
For the parking garage, construction was sequenced around the installation of a centrally-placed Potain MD 559 tower crane. This setup enabled a single crane to cover the entire 900,000ft² footprint of the structure, reducing the need for additional lifting equipment and helping manage the tight site layout.
The 22USt capacity MD 559 has been used throughout the garage build, handling precast concrete planks, heavy rebar, curtain wall assemblies, and other large elements.
Once the garage is completed, the area occupied by the crane will be used for a snow-melt system.
On the hospital expansion, the Potain MD 569 has taken on tasks that would be challenging for mobile cranes, including lifts of up to 8USt for elevator and stair tower components and daily steel placements of up to 4USt bundles.
The MD 569’s reach has allowed deliveries to be managed directly from site corners, suited to the limited staging areas available.
