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?

2 comments

2 Comments

grays136m 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?

iris9276m 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.