“It was tight, the way we had to set the beams,” said Tim Welty, sales specialist and estimator with Central Rent-A-Crane. “The Grove was set up 20 ft lower down in the creek valley with the crawler set up top.”
The Grove GMK6300L is a 350-ton capacity all-terrain (AT) crane. It was configured with 103 ft of main boom, 203,900 lb of counterweight, and 29 ft of lift radius at 360 degrees. That configuration remained mostly the same through the three different setups for the three different spans of the bridge. The Link-Belt 218 HSL is a 110-ton capacity crawler crane configured with 80 ft of main boom and a 30-ft lift radius at 360 degrees. The two cranes worked well together because the Grove AT had the capacity to handle the load at 100 ft of boom, while the crawler remained above to assist with picking and setting the 100,000-lb beams.
“The Grove had excellent maneuverability in the valley, helping to make setting the 15 precast beams happen efficiently,” said Welty.
Turning an existing state roadway, in this case State Road 37, and bringing it up to interstate standards to make it part of I-69 requires lane widening. The new bridge reflects those standards.
