Who Determines The Crane Requirement?

[Razors Edge ★]

...for a building construction?

I'm used to one or two "big" cranes and a few of the smaller ones, but four big ones seems like a lot for a building in my hood.  The 20+ story office building in the distance of the picture only as a single one, and the offices going up by my Metro station has two (at most) big ones, so why are they using four near my house? Seems overkill? Or does it speed up the process enough to justify them?

[Kzoo]

Answer... construction engineers.  People that know stuff. Logistics, planning, weight requirements.  I’m guessing @2Far knows a few of them.  

[maddmaxx ★]

It depends entirely on your kneeds.

 

[Razors Edge ★]

18 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

Answer... construction engineers.  People that know stuff. Logistics, planning, weight requirements.  I’m guessing @2Far knows a few of them.  

He seems to be the man to ask. I assume @jsharr would just make something up, and @donkpow might know a thing or two, but 2Far actually walks the walk.

[JerrySTL ★]

Bob when he's not locked up in Stalag 13.

[Further]

The man writing the check has some say..

Cranes are insanely expensive to operate. The added efficiency of an added crane (any piece of equipment actually) has to be enough to offset the cost. 

[Razors Edge ★]

8 minutes ago, Further said:

The man writing the check has some say.. 

Cranes are insanely expensive to operate. The added efficiency of an added crane (any piece of equipment actually) has to be enough to offset the cost. 

Mr Clark must have deep pockets or a tight deadline!

[Further]

1 minute ago, Razors Edge said:

Mr Clark must have deep pockets or a tight deadline!

Once the land is purchased time becomes a big expense. Millions of dollars in land not doing anything.  The sooner the project is complete the sooner the income starts. Some extra money to get the income started sooner may make sense.

Or not, every project is different.

[Page Turner]

...modular building systems use a lot of cranes. If I had to guess, that's what I wold guess...some kind of construction system where a lot of it has been prefabbed offsite.

[Razors Edge ★]

3 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

lot of cranes

Only eight cranes - so twice what my local "not gonna be 57 stories or built in 19 days" building has.

[Page Turner]

13 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

...what my local "not gonna be 57 stories or built in 19 days" building has.

...and you know this ? Are you on the planning and zoning commission ? Enjoy the sun while you can, sucker.  

[Razors Edge ★]

2 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...and you know this ? Are you on the planning and zoning commission ? Enjoy the sun while you can, sucker.  

Supposedly, the tallest is "only" 44 stories.  Also, maybe it is one crane per building?

• 28-story office building with 10,700 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 22-story office with 5,500 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 14-story hotel with 240 rooms, plus retail and restaurants
• 44-story residential building with 600 units

[Page Turner]

Just now, Razors Edge said:

Supposedly, the tallest is "only" 44 stories.  Also, maybe it is one crane per building?

• 28-story office building with 10,700 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 22-story office with 5,500 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 14-story hotel with 240 rooms, plus retail and restaurants
• 44-story residential building with 600 units

...that is a boatload of traffic impacts. 

[sheep_herder ★]

Most cranes I ever saw at one time was in Beijing, and there were a lot.

[maddmaxx ★]

14 minutes ago, sheep_herder said:

Most cranes I ever saw at one time was in Beijing, and there were a lot.

Ditto Kuala Lumpur.  One could look toward the horizon in any direction and see cranes and buildings going up. It was like the wild west of construction.  Unfortunately one could also walk around the city and find crumbling sidewalks as maintenance of the once built structures was insufficient.

[Prophet Zacharia]

6 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Supposedly, the tallest is "only" 44 stories.  Also, maybe it is one crane per building?

• 28-story office building with 10,700 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 22-story office with 5,500 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 14-story hotel with 240 rooms, plus retail and restaurants
• 44-story residential building with 600 units

Is this at least partially related to Amazon expansion?

[donkpow]

What is the project? I see Clark is building the Gateway Project which includes two towers on one site.

[Ralphie ★]

1 hour ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Is this at least partially related to Amazon expansion?

I think just aboot all building is.

 

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

1 hour ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Is this at least partially related to Amazon expansion?

Nope, Razorlandia is not close to New Amazonia. They’re about 20 miles apart, an hour drive here in NoVA

[2Far ★]

9 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Supposedly, the tallest is "only" 44 stories.  Also, maybe it is one crane per building?

• 28-story office building with 10,700 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 22-story office with 5,500 square feet of retail and restaurants
• 14-story hotel with 240 rooms, plus retail and restaurants
• 44-story residential building with 600 units

Some kind of quad type layout was my impression. It looks to have a pretty big footprint, so reach was an issue. 

On most  commercial buildings, typically the GC supplies the crane since there isn't enough room for the subs to bring there own. Also, the reality is that they sit idle a lot of the time so the can always do work for the curtain wallers, plumbers, sprinkler guys, HVAC, etc. 

With heavy industrial, we usually bring our own. While there's a lot of plumb bobbing time, there are times the crane is supporting something all day. We usually have a lot more room / access. How big, how far, how high are the main factors in selecting the crane. 

[bikeman564™]

4 looks cooler than 2

[2Far ★]

We use a lot of these lattice boom, crawler cranes. The come in with about 25 truckloads of components and some assembly required.

 

This is a hydraulic, telescoping boom crane. We use them up to about 90 tons. No assembly required.

 

 

[Razors Edge ★]

2 hours ago, Old#7 said:

Nope, Razorlandia is not close to New Amazonia. They’re about 20 miles apart, an hour drive here in NoVA

Or bike ride!  Amazon HQ2 will actually be a pretty easy commute once they get their local paths squared away.  

1 hour ago, 2Far said:

We use a lot of these lattice boom, crawler cranes. The come in with about 25 truckloads of components and some assembly required.

There is one of those baby cranes in the photo (just left of the Clark sign).  Thanks for the insight.

2 hours ago, donkpow said:

What is the project? I see Clark is building the Gateway Project which includes two towers on one site.

Yep - Reston Gateway.  A& B are what the Clark folks are working on.  Maybe C as well.  D is where all the on-site construction stuff sits - trailers, concrete things, generators, trucks, etc. E through J is still the "Top Secret" site that gets developed later. 

10 hours ago, Page Turner said:

..that is a boatload of traffic impacts.

Already impacting traffic due to construction.  At the bottom of that red line in the pic above is the new Reston Metro station that opens next year.  There is zero on site parking (vs current Wiehle or future Herndon stations), so the county's "goal" is highest density closest to the Metro station. Traffic will be "interesting" at rush hour.

For further reference, the 45 mile W&OD bike trail is the small "road" directly under the "PHAS" of the Phase 1 red box (you can see the bike lane overpass).  That's mile marker 18 on the trail.  

Likewise, on the road to the left (west) of building B, that currently ends at a T due to the Dulles Toll Road at the southern end.  There is a plan being formulated to tunnel UNDER the toll road in the next decade and provide another connecting point between N & S Reston.

[Razors Edge ★]

4 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

5 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

Most cranes I ever saw at one time was in Beijing, and there were a lot.

Ditto Kuala Lumpur.  One could look toward the horizon in any direction and see cranes and buildings going up. It was like the wild west of construction.  Unfortunately one could also walk around the city and find crumbling sidewalks as maintenance of the once built structures was insufficient.

I can't imagine what places with insane urban growth must be like.  Places like China have so many million plus cities now, it is NUTS.  I actually can imagine they face constant crane shortages (and other logistical nightmares).  

And, yep, build it, move on, and forget it can lead to big problems down the line with maintenance of the buildings and the infrastructure supporting it.  We see it with urban blight where at some point, it is cheaper and easier to just build a new neighborhood somewhere else rather than maintain aging structures and the infrastructure.

[donkpow]

5 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Yep

That answers, "Why?" As for who, it's probably someone on staff, as others have said. I've dealt with a couple of engineering firms and there is like a bull pen of engineers doing the work. Junior engineers to supervisory engineers. The are some individuals or groups that work within their own specialty. I imagine the engineers involved with the cranes are like civil engineers. Just about any engineer could set the specs. The crane supplier probably also has people to help out.

[2Far ★]

17 minutes ago, donkpow said:

That answers, "Why?" As for who, it's probably someone on staff, as others have said. I've dealt with a couple of engineering firms and there is like a bull pen of engineers doing the work. Junior engineers to supervisory engineers. The are some individuals or groups that work within their own specialty. I imagine the engineers involved with the cranes are like civil engineers. Just about any engineer could set the specs. The crane supplier probably also has people to help out.

There are subscriber type programs that uses can buy that will allow the user to do fairly complicated lift plans. Select a crane (usually the crane is rented due to availability rather than specific size) and all the crane-relevant parameters are inserted into the calculations. There crane is usually sized for the biggest/longest lift unless lift is crazy outside the rest of the lifts. We had several cranes on the Houston project, but the owner brought in a monster crane to lift the 200' tall cold boxes into place. The crane they used to assemble the monster crane was bigger than anything we had on site.

[MickinMD ★]

The building schedule might require it to be built quickly, requiring more cranes, workforce, etc.

A couple years ago, they were building or repairing a skyscraper that bordered on Charles St., the main N-S road through downtown Baltimore, and had a lane or two of Charles St. blocked off and there were a lot of cranes. Apparently they needed to get it done ASAP.

[Page Turner]

1 hour ago, Razors Edge said:

And, yep, build it, move on, and forget it can lead to big problems down the line with maintenance of the buildings and the infrastructure supporting it.  We see it with urban blight where at some point, it is cheaper and easier to just build a new neighborhood somewhere else rather than maintain aging structures and the infrastructure.

...sez the guy with all the plastic bicycles and threadbare tyres. 

[Razors Edge ★]

3 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...sez the guy with all the plastic bicycles. 

My daily commuter is STEEL, Baby!!!!!