Pioneering peace of mind: transforming plant turnarounds
During the high stakes period of a plant turnaround, Northwest Crane Service relies on a fleet of Liebherr cranes to complete a series of critical lifts – all while ensuring maximum safety and customer satisfaction.
A plant turnaround, often called an outage or shutdown, is a scheduled period when a facility conducts maintenance on equipment and utilities.
Northwest Crane Service was chosen as the crane service provider for a plant turnaround in fall 2023 at a site in Kansas. Utilizing industry-leading Liebherr equipment and backed by months of planning, technical engineering and ongoing communication with the customer, Northwest Crane Service maintained high productivity, kept the turnaround on schedule, and ensured the project's safe completion.
Critical selection
At Liebherr USA, Co., safety is not just a buzzword, every crane has a sophisticated safety concept. With these safety features in mind, crane selection played a critical role in the timely completion of this project as there were several complex lifts.
The most difficult lift included a 220,000-pound ammonia converter. This lift not only required a large crane, but one that could meet the customer’s ground bearing pressure requirements. Northwest had the ideal solution by utilizing the Liebherr LR1600/2-W, narrow track crawler crane. As the only LR1600/2-W in the US, it was clear that Northwest's utilization of the Liebherr crane was the ideal solution for this job as it could easily lift and maneuver in a tight space.
Transforming plant turnarounds
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Safety, innovation, and teamwork are in the DNA of how we operate at Northwest Crane Service. And we use these same parameters when selecting our equipment – which is why we have a fleet of exclusively Liebherr cranes.
The Liebherr LR 1600/2-W excels in heavy lift applications across a wide variety of industries. The crawler offers both standard and narrow travel gear allowing it to move on tracks between tight erection sites. The LR 1600/2-W also provides class lifting capacity with numerous enhancing attachments.
“Safety, innovation, and teamwork are in the DNA of how we operate at Northwest Crane Service. And we use these same parameters when selecting our equipment – which is why we have a fleet of exclusively Liebherr cranes,” says Andy Hodges, owner of Northwest Crane Service.
Setting the standard
In addition to the LR 1600/2-W crawler crane, Northwest utilized a fleet of Liebherr mobile cranes including the LTM 1650-8.1, LTM 1230-5.1, LTM 1130-5.1, LTM 1110-5.1, LRT 1100-2.1, and LTM 1070-4.2. Northwest operated and maintained the fleet of mobile cranes to provide rigging and hoisting support for a variety of technical components, tools, and pipe during the mechanical shutdown of the plant. Due to the tight timeframe, it was essential that Northwest personnel stay on the customer’s schedule and meet their lifting needs in an efficient manner.
Not only are Liebherr mobile cranes efficient for the plant turnaround, but they offer powerful, long telescopic booms that can reach incredible heights quickly and easily. As flexibility is a high priority for Northwest, the mobile cranes can also be configured quickly using functional lattice extensions, folding jibs, fixed and luffing lattice jibs.
“Liebherr’s commitment to producing the safest and most innovative machinery on the market coupled with the collaborative nature of our relationship allows Northwest to provide the industry leading service we are known for day in and day out,” concludes Hodges.
In total, Northwest deployed 10 Liebherr cranes that were operated, rigged and supervised by a 56-member team. Working day and night, the project took place over 57 days and 12,357 man-hours. Northwest successfully completed multiple complex and tandem crane lifts with zero incidents, owing to Liebherr's excellence.
