TOWER CRANES Ӏ SECTOR REPORT
j tower cranes,” he says. “The system gives intuitive control to the operator, and it really does speed up delivery of the crane to the site and shortens the set-up time. Set-up becomes really rapid, a matter of 15 minutes for the operator to establish load charts and the like, which can be a saving of several hours. I think it is a big advance that will be very helpful for the owners and in the end it will help them with their whole life-customer footprint. The first luffers will be fitted with it this year, then through next year we shall see the larger luffers being changed to the CCS system. “It is the UK, and countries with historic links with the UK, that sees the largest demand for luffing jib cranes: the UK takes at least are at 50% of the market. Part of the reason is legislation: under UK law oversailing rights are limited, and luffing-jib tower cranes don’t need to oversail neighbouring properties. And because they take up less space you can fit more of them, which means more hooks, on a job site. You can put several of them right up against the site boundaries and their counterjibs won’t oversail and they won’t interfere with each other over the site.” Wolffkran is another company that specialises in luffing-boom tower cranes. In their case, unusually, raising and lowering the boom is hydraulically powered. “The hydraulic cylinder supports the jib better,” says Stephen Palmer, their UK external operations lead, “and it gives the added benefit that it can raise the jib to near-vertical, so we can have shorter park-up radiuses: on our 166 B hydraulic luffing jib crane the minimum radius for parking up is eight metres; if you are on a tight site
22 CRANES TODAY
The jib on
Wolffkran’s 166B can be raised near vertically
that can be a real benefit, and it is something that customers always ask for. “We are selling one of them to one of our long-standing clients, Churchill, who build retirement homes. They are medium-rise buildings, all to a broadly similar plan, and usually in residential
areas where oversailing can be an issue, which is part of their logic for choosing luffers, and the 166B is all they need: it has all the capacity and reach that they require, they don’t need anything bigger and they couldn’t manage with anything smaller. They zone them round the perimeter f
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