Liftech Wins Award for Bay Bridge Floating Crane Project

SEAONC-PosterLiftech received an Award of Excellence from the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC) in recognition of our engineering work on the 1700 t floating crane, also known as the Left Coast Lifter.

The Left Coast Lifter is a barge-mounted crane designed to erect the major components of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge self-anchored suspension span.  The crane was delivered to the Bay Area in 2009 and was quickly put to work constructing the temporary steel falsework in preparation of the tower and deck erection.

The Left Coast Lifter is owned by the contractors for the new bridge span, American Bridge/Fluor Daniel Joint Venture (ABF), and was fabricated by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (ZPMC) in Shanghai, China.  The 100 ft wide x 400 ft long barge was fabricated by US Barge LLC in the United States.  Liftech provided structural engineering consulting services to ABF for the crane structure, including technical specifications, design, and fabrication review assistance.  The crane structure design was a collaborative effort by ZPMC, Liftech, and ABF, with ZPMC as the design-build contractor.

The crane is the largest crane barge on the West Coast.  The boom, the arm of the crane that lifts the loads, is 25 stories tall and can lift 1700 metric tons, equivalent to approximately one thousand automobiles or a container crane at the Port of Oakland.

We thank the SEAONC selection committee for selecting our project.  We are grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this exciting project and enjoyed collaborating with the team of American and Chinese engineers.  The credit goes to everyone who contributed to the success of this project.

Liftech was also awarded the SEAOC Award of Merit for the Left Coast Lifter, which was awarded on September 23, 2010, in Indian Wells, California.