PRESTON group was approached by George Karvountzis of FDC Construction & Fitout with a material handling dilemma.

FDC has been contracted to refurbish a plant room on level 6 of an existing building in Sydney’s CBD. Materials had to be removed and replaced without disruptions to tenants. FDC looked at the possibility of installing a tower crane for the job but weight restrictions and the physical nature of the building stopped that idea.

Preston’s solution was the latest addition to its mini crawler fleet, a 6-tonne UNIC URW-706, working in conjunction with a Preston Superdeck loading platform.

The carne could be positioned on the level 5 podium and service both the platform on level 6 and the loading and unloading of trucks at ground level.

This posed a problem as the podium slab had weight restrictions and the physical nature of the building made it difficult to position the crane in such a way to service both the platform and truck with the required loads.

With 1970s drawings to work from, the Preston team used AutoCAD to plot the optimum position for the crane. It was calculated the crane would have to be supported on a steel frame as the slab in that location would not be able to take the outrigger point loads under certain lifting conditions.

This frame was designed by an external engineer and fabricated to dimensions supplied by Preston.

The Preston loading platform and the Unic URW-706 was installed on October 23,2010, and removed on January 15,2011 with the project completed on time and on budget.

Published by: Cranes & Lifting on its May 2011 Issue. Click here to view the page that features this article.
(Cranes and Lifting is a high quality, professional bi-monthly magazine that recognises the importance of the cranes and lifting sector. It covers all classes of mobile and fixed cranes, construction and workshop cranes, truck-loading cranes and, in addition, the growing choices of alternative lifting and positioning systems.)