The Pavilion at the Grand Pier, Weston-super-Mare was destroyed by fire in July 2008. The owners have pledged to rebuild it and have a bigger better pier opened by the summer of 2010.
On 5 August 2009 it was announced that contractors John Sisk & Son Ltd had been selected to construct the new pavilion and subsequently King Lifting were asked to Provide Cranes to assist with this construction.
How do you get a 80 tonne crane onto a jack up barge that is 240 metres out to sea and is 30 times too heavy to move down the Pier? This was the recent problem, John Sisk were faced with in order to ensure the Weston-Super-Mare pier opened on time next year. Richard Sutton, Contract Manager for John Sisk, contacted Benn Sallis, Contracts Manager at King Lifting Ltd to find a solution to the problem.
“After planning meetings, we took the decision to build a ramp, 150 metres long and 4 metres high, out of sand, topped with TracWay to allow the crane to drive from the last point of the shore that it can reach to the barge,” said Richard Sutton
The operation was on a very tight schedule, as we needed to wait for the tide to go out before the ramp could be built. The ramp and the TracWay then needed to be removed before the tide came back in. We started the work at 4pm and by 11pm the crane was safely onboard the barge.
The crane will work for John Sisk Ltd for approximately 11 weeks working 10 hours a day 7 days a week.
One of the main reasons John Sisk decided to use a mobile crane compared to a typical crawler crane is simply the fact the mobile crane has the added benefit of it's telescopic jib, which means the jib can be stowed away safely and quickly during high winds, compared to the crawler crane which in the event of high wind & tides means the barge needs to be shipped back to Cardiff, which is a very costly exercise to the project.
King Lifting Ltd supplied a Terex-Demag AC80-2 which has a 50 metre main boom, and can lift 1 tonne to 40m radius.