Noticed a big shift in how we handle tower crane climbing sections in Chicago

Three years ago, we always used a mobile crane for the whole climb, but last month on a 40-story job, the crew did the final climb using the tower crane itself. Last week, I saw another site downtown doing the same thing, saving a full day of street closures. Are you guys seeing this become the standard method now?

3 comments

3 Comments

grays131h ago

The union safety rep on our last job flagged a real concern with this method. He said internal climbing puts way more stress on the crane's existing structure during that critical lift phase. Has that been part of the risk assessment for these new climbs?

iris9271h ago

Ever see what happens when they skip that step? My buddy watched a crane crew get shut down for a week because their assessment totally missed the internal stress point @grays13 mentioned. The whole lift plan got torn up and rewritten. It's not something you want to find out the hard way.

jana_jones37m ago

That internal climb method needs a solid plan up front. We got the crane maker's engineers to sign off on the load charts before we even lifted the first section. Their specs gave the crew the clear numbers to work with safely.