Crawler goes to work in a hole

Phoenix, AZ-based Marco Crane met the challenge of an unusual job to place a crane in a hole. The company used its 550 ton capacity Grove GMK7550 wheeled mobile crane to lift and place its 300 ton Link-Belt 348 Hylab 5 crawler crane into a large hole, which is part of a 300 foot by 230 foot below grade parking garage project in Scottsdale, AZ at the exclusive Montelucia Resort.

Marco Crane used its 550 ton Grove GMK7550 telescopic wheeled mobile crane to lift and place its 300 ton Link Belt 348 Hylab 5 crawler crane into a 300 foot by 230 foot below grade parking garage construction site. There are obstructions all around the site, and the ramp into the hole wasn't adequate for driving the crane down

To erect the parking garage, the contractor needed the crawler crane to pick 40,000 pounds at a 130 foot radius. The parking garage will be a pre-cast concrete beam structure and the crane in the hole is now setting 40,000 pound beams across the garage.

“To have one crane up on top would have required lifting 40,000 pounds at a 260 foot radius,” said Kelly Hadland at Marco. “This meant a crane had to be placed into the hole and lift material from the top. The ramp down into the hole was not adequate to drive a crane on, so the crane had to be hoisted down by an assist crane.”

Determining how to get the crane in the hole was a challenge, said Hadland. “It is surrounded on three sides by buildings and obstructions, and the fourth side of the hole bordered a busy street located just 45 feet away,” he said.

To pick and place the crawler into the hole, the cranes' tracks were installed off site. All counterweight and boom was placed down into the hole ahead of time, and pre-assembled. The crawler weighed in at 188,000 pounds and was set at a 45 foot radius to avoid too much ground pressure on the retaining wall.

“Link-Belt's engineers supplied pick points and sling lengths and Marco's team configured the rigging details,” Hadland explained.

The contractor for the project is T-PAC, a division of Kiewit.