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A statement made by Marco IJdo, Senior Project Manager at Sarens. And that's not saying too much, because the specialist in horizontal and vertical movement of (extremely heavy and large) goods has been commissioned by construction consortium De Groene Boog to carry out exceptional work for the construction of the Rottemer Tunnel of the A16 Rotterdam project. IJdo updates GWW Magazine on this phenomenal assignment.
For the underwater concrete floor of the Rottemer Tunnel, De Groene Boog decided to make prefabricated expansion beams next to the construction pit and position them in the wet. Says IJdo, "Sarens was hired to load these heavy-duty dilatation beams at the construction site, transport them to the hoisting location, and hoist them into the tunnel pit. Consider that a dilatation beam weighs 76 tons and with lifting frame included, the combination weighs 90 tons. Loading, transporting and hoisting is quite a challenge."
Together with De Groene Boog, Sarens developed a special transport frame, on which the concrete beam is laid, on a 16-liner trailer. In addition, a special lifting beam was developed in consultation, with which the dilatation beam can be safely lifted. "Currently, we are working with 14 crawler cranes and 6 mobile cranes, which are growing in number," IJdo lists. "A beam is lifted with 3 cranes, to be exact with 2 mobile cranes on one side of the tunnel box and a crawler crane on the other side. At the pre-construction locations, by the way, there is a fourth crane, which lifts the dilatation beam out of the formwork and onto the transport frame."
About the development of the transport frame and lifting beam, IJdo says: "Good cooperation characterizes success, we entered into close consultation with De Groene Boog and together we provided the final design. Calculations and drawings went back and forth, things had to be decided such as how many lifting points the beam needs. After all, the stiffness of the beam determines that. We ended up with a spreader beam with 32 lifting points. A nice workable and safe whole."
Sarens is known for its customized transportation and lifting services. "We bring our past experience to every job," IJdo outlines. "Sarens has its own engineering department, where not only was work done on the design for the lifting beam and transport frame, but where calculations were also made by our engineers regarding ground loads at all the locations where we drive and lift. Nothing is left to chance. Our work for The Green Arch shows what we are capable of as an expert company and makes it clear that good cooperation is enormously important. We are therefore enormously proud of this assignment!"
