Liebherr Tower Cranes: Mega airport construction project

Tower cranes as far as the eye can see – 58 EC-H series tower cranes are working on the construction of what will be the largest airport in the world.

Tower cranes as far as the eye can see

The total construction site area is 3.5 million square metres – which equates to over 490 football pitches. That is how incredibly large what will become the largest airport in the world, the İstanbul Yeni Havalimanı in Turkey actually is. In summer 2016 there was a total of around 13,000 people and around 2000 construction machines working on this impressive site. After the gigantic airport has been completed it will have six runways and will handle up to 200 million passengers per year. With 350 different destinations, it will become the hub between Europe and Asia – and why were we the first choice for this mega project?

58 EC-H cranes, the majority of which are mounted on rails

Bespoke solution

Interacting with the Turkish building contractor IGA Havalimanı Isletmesi A.S, our Tower Crane Solutions Project Department developed a bespoke solution to suit the extremely complex infrastructure and building layout. Our project engineers visited the site managers several times on the actual site for this purpose. The result is a beautifully thought out, cost-effective solution: 58 EC-H cranes, the majority of which are mounted on rails. This enables the massive area to be covered by fewer cranes than would normally be required for such large projects. The time-tested Litronic cranes have hook heights between 30 and 60 metres and maximum lifting capacities of up to twelve tonnes each.

Meeting deadlines with a tight schedule

The negotiations started in March 2015, the contract was signed in May and all 58 cranes were delivered to the site on schedule within seven months before the end of the year. How did we do it? Our decentralised corporate structure played a major role in making this possible. Individual structural steelwork components, for example, were produced at our Spanish sister plant in Pamplona which saved a great deal of time.

There are five service technicians on the site around the clock to provide the construction workers, with advice and assistance.

Local Liebherr company and reliable customer service around the clock

Liebherr Makine Ticaret Servis Limited Şirketi in Istanbul helps the customer on site to manage all logistics, customs and tax matters. The local Liebherr company also acted as a sort of "cultural bridge" between the customer and our plant in Biberach. Among other things, this helped prevent cultural misunderstandings and therefore made the sales negotiations much easier. It also enables us to provide excellent support to the customer on site throughout the entire process, for example by providing reliable 24/7 service. There are five service technicians on the site around the clock to provide the construction workers on the dusty site, which means that a great deal of maintenance work is required, with advice and assistance. We have even established a spare parts warehouse on the site to minimise delivery times.

This entire package, from the first crane plans and scheduled deliveries to excellent service, convinced our customers to choose Liebherr tower cranes.