SECTOR REPORT Ӏ RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION
space and lift materials - glazing panels or other fitments - up from outside the building.” But spider and mini crawler
cranes are not limited to working inside buildings on finishing tasks. Their size and ability to enter confined spaces are equally useful, and just as much used, in original construction. Daniel Ezzatvar is marketing and special projects director of sales and rental company GGR, noted for their glazing robots, spider cranes and UNIC mini crawlers. “There is a symbiosis between building design and the cranes that build them,” he says. “There is a feedback loop between architects, materials, and lifting gear. For example, when large insulated glass panels became possible and available, architects began designing them into buildings; and the glazing robot and glazing attachments for cranes followed. Nowadays a typical housing use for one of our mini cranes is lifting steel I-beams into position and then glazing between them. Lifting I-beams is about as bread-and-butter as housebuilding gets. “Older buildings, of brick
and tile typically, may have very restricted access; newer ones can be of lighter materials – wood cladding for example - and are generally but not always less constricted. But in either
GGR’s mini cranes can lift trusses...
... and fit in narrow spaces
case there are three key issues: transport – moving your crane from your depot to the job site; access – getting it into the site once you are there; and finally how much working space you have when you get there. Compact cranes score in all of them. “The fact is that today’s mini- cranes do the normal tasks of house-building much more easily and economically than their bigger cousins. Mini spiders and mini crawlers can be transported on a trailer or builder’s truck. They are small and mobile enough to drive themselves down side-alleys and even up steps. And since a spider or mini crawler has the reach to lift tiles over a house roof to the other
side, and the capacity to lift roof trusses and everything else that a house needs, why use something that is bigger, less manoeuvrable and more expensive to deliver and run?“ “Another virtue of smaller cranes is their range of specialisation. A contractor might own cranes that cover all that he needs for most middle-of-the- road jobs but may come across a specialised or extreme need - of reach, of capacity, of tight access – for one particular job. Then he can come to our hire fleet which spans the whole range, with specialist attachments as well, if required, and we can rent it to him or do a contract lift.” f
CRANES TODAY 35
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