Saw a wild setup at a job site in Phoenix last month

I was driving past a new hospital construction site off the 10 freeway and had to pull over. They had a massive crawler crane, looked like a Liebherr LR 11000, lifting these giant prefab concrete panels. What got me was the rigging. Instead of the usual four-point spreader bar, they had this custom six-point setup with synthetic slings on each corner and two more in the middle. The lift itself was smooth, but I've never seen that many attachment points on a panel that size, maybe 30 feet by 15. The signaler was using hand signals I didn't fully recognize either, looked like some company-specific system. It made me wonder if they were dealing with a known weakness in the panels or just being extra careful. Has anyone else run into a six-point rig for a slab lift, or know what those extra signals might mean?

2 comments

2 Comments

linda_wood1mo ago

That's some serious overkill, makes my usual two-strap method look like I'm lifting groceries. Maybe the engineer saw a crack in the CAD model and got spooked.

-1

xena_kim1mo ago

So wait @linda_wood, you're saying the engineer just got scared by something in the software... or did they actually spot a real problem with the design?