All These Crane Collapses
All These Crane Collapses
(OP)
One in New York. Then another. This one in Wyoming:
http ://www.cas perstartri bune.net/a rticles/20 08/05/31/s pecial_bre aking_news /doc4841b5 9577eaa875 988288.txt
Seems like I remember a few others, too.
It seems we are seeing a rash of crane failures in the last several months. I wonder if this is a result of just a bunch of old cranes finally reaching the end of their lives vs. poor maintenance or what? I feel that bridges tend to at least have inspections performed every so often. Does anyone know if there is an agency or inspection standard that these cranes must pass or is it totally up to the crane company/contractor to monitor?
Public safety is definitely affected by this yet as a structural engineer I'm not sure whether there is an oversight by engineers in these things.
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Seems like I remember a few others, too.
It seems we are seeing a rash of crane failures in the last several months. I wonder if this is a result of just a bunch of old cranes finally reaching the end of their lives vs. poor maintenance or what? I feel that bridges tend to at least have inspections performed every so often. Does anyone know if there is an agency or inspection standard that these cranes must pass or is it totally up to the crane company/contractor to monitor?
Public safety is definitely affected by this yet as a structural engineer I'm not sure whether there is an oversight by engineers in these things.






RE: All These Crane Collapses
I don't know anything specific regarding any of the cases you mentioned, but the few folks I've met that do these sorts of big lifts are usually VERY careful types.
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I wonder what the safety factors (presuming ASD design) are in the crane industry these days. As shin25 has pointed out, much of the operation is out of the hands of the designers as well...
Sad; I very much hope everyone involved recovers quickly. Further I hope that the incident is thoroughly investigated by independant auditors and finger pointing, if any, is done in a responsible, professional manner. No one means for this sort of thing to happen; God forbid it ever happens again. *knocks on wood*
YS
B.Eng (Carleton)
Working in New Zealand, thinking of my snow covered home...
RE: All These Crane Collapses
Big Blue really was big, it reportedly took 150 semi's to bring it into Milwaukee.
RE: All These Crane Collapses
Wyoming is noted for wind- it just never stops up there.
Seems like in the Big Blue case, that in fact, several of the operators were charged with errors.
The big issue in crane design is weight. The dead weight of the crane boom reduces the working load and reach. So if you can come up with a lighter boom, you have more lift capacity and more market for your crane. Designing cranes conservatively won't help sales.
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A PE only is only required to have 4 years experience to be responsible for the design of the crane (or tens of identical cranes) right?
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http:/
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www.msnbc.com/id/25063876
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I would agree that more stringent crane monitoring would help reduce disasters like these. I just wonder though of the cost vs. efficiency of a state-by-state effort vs. a national effort...or even a large city policy.
The article did an awful job of correlating crane collapses vs. stringent inspection policies.
Here's a curious quote from the article:
New York City has only four inspectors on the payroll to inspect more than 200 cranes, 26 of them large tower cranes. About four inspections are conducted each day, a routine that one 40-year industry veteran said won't detect real problems such as the rebuilt crane part blamed for a crane collapse last month.
So 200 cranes - 4 inspectors. That means each inspector covers 50 cranes. If it takes a couple of days to inspect a crane, that's 100 days to cover the cranes each year (vs. 250 available days). Cranes generally are set up for fairly long durations. That doesn't sound too overwhelming to me.