And now the "finishing" touch
27 Jun 2016
The main elements of the 1,500-tonne double overhead bridge crane—four girders and their corresponding trolleys—are now in place in the Assembly Hall. The big red crawler crane has been dismantled and is on its way to Sweden, where a 330-tonne "sphere" for liquid gas storage is waiting for a lift.
The most spectacular part of the operation is over. However, a considerable amount of work remains to be done, most of it at height, to finalize cabling connections, platform and walkway fittings, and the like--the "finishing" activities of the bridge crane installation.
By late September or early October, the two auxiliary cranes, each with a lifting capacity of 50 metric tonnes, will be delivered and installed. This time, there will be no need for a monster crawler crane operating from outside the building ...
Preliminary testing and commissioning are scheduled to begin in January/February 2017 for the large crane, and a few months later for the smaller one.
The person standing on the support rails looks positively tiny next to the mammoth 47-metre-long steel girder!
All four girders are now in place. At the end of another workday the remaining trolleys will be installed on the south bridge as they already are on the north.
The 186-ton steel girder is raised surprisingly quickly. Workers on the basemat and in the rafters work in sync to guide the component onto the waiting tracks.
Before being lifted, the load must be carefully balanced on the hook. This operation takes much longer than the actual lifting.
Steel cables as thick as a man's thigh are needed to lift the 186-tonne load. The sheer weight of the cables means that the power of a forklift is required to attach them to the beam.