Italian crane service provider, Vernazza Autogru, has lifted two bridge sections at the Porto di Prà shipyard, Italy, on behalf of shipbuilding company Fincantieri.
The sections weighed 500 and 290 tonnes respectively. Vernazza opted for crawler cranes produced by Japanese crane manufacturer Tadano, primarily due to the models’ powerful lattice booms.
The bridge sections were a composite construction of steel girders and a concrete deck on top, which had to be lifted onto pillars. “These demanding lifts needed cranes that would not just be able to lift extremely heavy loads, but also to move them while suspended in the air,” said Marco Galli, who was responsible for the project.
Before work began, the two cranes had to be transported from Vernazza’s headquarters in Vado Ligure to the site in Porto di Prà and assembled. Crane experts at Vernazza took eight days to set up the CC 68.1250-1 and five to set up the CC 38.650-1.
Lifts had to be carried out over existing bridges, the Genoa-Ventimiglia railway line and the busy Aurelia state road.
A tandem lift was used for the 500-tonne bridge section, while the CC 68.1250-1 was used for the 290-tonne section. The latter was set up with a secure sockets layer (SSL) configuration, a 72-m boom and 450 tonnes of superlift counterweight, while the CC 38.650-1 was also set up with an SSL configuration and a boom of the same length, but with 325 tonnes of superlift counterweight.
The two cranes lifted and moved the 500-tonne section together at a radius of 50 m and a height of 7 m, while the CC 68.1250-1 put the 290-tonne section in place at a radius of 41 m and a height of 9 m. Altogether, 13 people were used across both operations.
