Zero disruption: a Potain MD 559 and MD 569 work either side of an operating hospital
At Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, a Potain MD 559 is building a six-storey car park while an MD 569 serves the hospital expansion — both erected and run by Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service on a campus that never closes.
Two scopes on one working campus
Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee is midway through a campus expansion that takes in a new six-storey parking structure — four lifts, three stair towers — and a skywalk linking it to an extension of the main hospital building. The complicating factor is that the hospital carries on operating throughout, and the stated goal is to complete construction with zero disruption to clinical activity.
With very little laydown area available inside an active healthcare campus, the contractors opted for tower cranes specifically to cut reliance on ground staging and shrink the site footprint. Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service sequenced trucking, assembly and dismantling around hospital operations.
One crane at the centre of the garage
The car park was designed and sequenced around a centrally placed Potain MD 559, so that a single machine could cover the whole footprint. That decision reduced the number of cranes and support equipment on campus and simplified site circulation.
Once erected, the 22 USt capacity crane became the workhorse of the job, running from early concrete work through to finishing: large precast planks, heavy rebar bundles, curtain wall frames, light poles and masonry. With a 900,000 sq ft footprint and several structural complexities, smaller cranes would not have covered the ground. When the structure is finished the crane pad will be reused to house the snow-melt system, leaving no visible trace of the position the whole build revolved around.
The picks a mobile crane could not take
On the hospital expansion, a Potain MD 569 of 27.6 USt capacity handles work that would have been awkward for a mobile crane on that site: 8 USt lifts for the lift and stair towers, 4 USt bundles of reinforcing steel and daily steel placements, drawing materials directly from the corners of the site with minimal staging.
Reynolds handles all assembly and dismantling in-house, providing location studies, engineered lift plans, trucking and scheduling, and using its own seven-axle mobile crane to erect the towers. The company also supplies the operators and coordinates with both general contractors.
“Our job was to take complexity off the table. By handling assembly, dismantling, lift planning, trucking, and operators, we give both contractors a single point of accountability and the confidence their cranes would perform exactly as planned.”
— Nathanael Reynolds, vice president, Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service
Source: Manitowoc — Photos: Manitowoc
Crane facts
- Parking structure: Potain MD 559, 22 USt capacity
- Hospital expansion: Potain MD 569, 27.6 USt capacity
- Typical MD 569 picks: 8 USt tower sections, 4 USt rebar bundles
- Erection crane: Reynolds’ own seven-axle mobile crane
Project
- Site: Froedtert Hospital campus, Milwaukee, USA
- Garage: Six storeys, four lifts, three stair towers, 900,000 sq ft footprint
- Link: Skywalk to new hospital expansion
- Lifting contractor: Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service
- Constraint: Zero disruption to hospital operations