Handling Heavier Loads in Construction

Abstract

Heavy lifting and exceptional transport equipment has been developed in an amazing way in the last two decades. Some years ago, transporting and lifting elements with the weights and sizes that we are capable to transport and lift nowadays was inconceivable. Big cranes were used to lift few hundreds of tons but now projects go up to thousand tons and at very important working radius, alternative heavy lift systems such as gantries, jacks, etc. are used for special jobs and, regarding transportation, Self- Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMT) have been developing, increasing in number, and over 14.000 ton platforms have been moved on wheels. Shipping is also adapting fast to this scenario with higher capacity geared vessels and other type of multimodal ships.This capacity increase is being used in civil and industrial construction (occasionally even in building construction) by developing prefabrication and modularization since it opens the possibility to handle bigger and heavier pieces. The advantages for construction are very important: better safety because work can be achieved without working on heights, better quality because of working in a more controlled environment (prefabrication yards, factories, etc.), improving the schedules by working on several parts simultaneously, price reductions by optimizing construction methods, global sequence and locations.