Link-Belt Construction Equipment Co. Link-Belt partnered with A1A Software for iCraneTrax, which ships on new cranes at no extra cost. Photo by Tudor Van Hampton/ENR Every crane owner has individual data requirements, said Bill Stramer on Nov. 12 in Miami. Related Links: AEMP Reveals Comprehensive Telematics Standard Telematics Help Trim Contractor Fleet Costs Who owns your data? If you own a new Link-Belt crane, you do, according to Bill Stramer, vice president of marketing for the Lexington, Ky.-based manufacturer. As global crane owners are cautiously adopting telematics to manage maintenance, safety, geography and other risks, manufacturers such as Link-Belt are
Preparing to run comparison tests of the world's tallest telescoping boom lifts presented a problem: What was the best way to measure the height of an aerial work platform reaching nearly 200 ft into the air?
Equipped with platforms extending more than 180 ft up and rugged running gear that is fully drivable at that height, the Genie machine, introduced at the Bauma exhibition last year, and the JLG unit, which debuted at Conexpo this year, have rapidly advanced the capabilities of telescopic boom lifts.
Frank Bardonaro Sr., who, over several decades, helped to streamline the operations of crane rental firms, died in Cincinnati on Oct. 21. He was 71.BARDONAROBardonaro served as dispatcher and operations manager for 27 years at Carlisle Crane, which, in 1999, joined with Anthony Crane to become known as Maxim Crane Works LP. He left Maxim in 2002 to become vice president of operations for Ohio at AmQuip, later working as that firm's special-projects manager until his death.According to Frank Bardonaro Jr., his father designed processes—such as matching crane-operator qualifications to assigned machines and contractor requirements—that made renting cranes safer and
Photo by Tudor Van Hampton for ENR Concrete is the most produced building material and accounts for up to 10% of industrial CO2 emissions annually. Related Links: Concrete Goes To College MIT News: How To Make Stronger, Greener Cement Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that portland cement can be manipulated to form stronger concrete that also poses less harm to the environment.More than 20 billion tonnes of portland-cement concrete are produced globally each year, and cement production accounts for 5% to 10% of the world's industrial carbon-dioxide emissions.“If we are to produce a better concrete that
Photo courtesy Genie/Terex Corp. Falls are the leading cause of death in construction, OSHA says. Related Links: IPAF's Accident Database IPAF Expands in North America Overturns and falls from height were the two leading causes of aerial-work-platform fatalities globally in the first half of the year, according to new data from the International Powered Access Federation.The data, which U.K.-based IPAF has collected since 2012, each year consistently point to machine overturns and falls from height as the two leading causes of death among people working on or near lifts, with electrocution, entrapment and mechanical failure taking up the balance. In the
Related Links: Left Coast Lifter Arrives at Tappan Zee Bridge New Tappan Zee Bridge Passes Milestone With Pile Cap Installation With just a few feet to spare, the Left Coast Lifter successful squeezed under the 60-year-old Tappan Zee Bridge on Oct. 8 as crews positioned it to begin building a replacement structure.The $50-million floating crane, with a lifting capacity of 1,750 metric tons, was ballasted with about 2.5 million gallons of water inside its roughly 400-ft-long, 100-ft-wide barge, so it could draft deep enough to clear the bridge. Prior to the move, the crane was upgraded with fresh wire rope
One of the world's largest floating cranes arrived on Oct. 6 at the site of the new Tappan Zee Bridge near Tarrytown, N.Y., after being fitted with fresh wire rope and undergoing tests this summer to prove the rig was ready to tackle the project's heaviest modules, some of which are expected to weigh up to 1,000 tonnes.
Photo courtesy Lampson Lampson's latest heavy lifter has been updated with hydraulically operated hoists. Related Links: Heavy Lifters: How Much Can You Bench? The World's Biggest Supercranes Heavy-lift specialist Lampson International LLC has finished load-testing its largest crane, the Transi-Lift LTL-3000, which can lift loads weighing 3,000 tonnes and is said to cost more than $25 million.Standing today in Lampson's Kennewick, Wash., facility, the unit was sold in 2010 to Hitachi Transport Ltd. to build a now-delayed Higashidori nuclear powerplant for Tokyo Electric Power Co.The LTL-3000 sports updated technology. "It's a departure from the previous Transi-Lifts in that the hoist
