When the internal lifts are too small: a spider crane takes the load to the second floor from outside
Spider Plus has used a UNIC URW-706 spider crane to lift furniture packages and glazing to the second level of the AGMC Showroom at City Walk in Dubai, after the loads proved too bulky to move through the building.
No route through the building
The renovation and extension of the showroom required large furniture packages and glazed panels to be brought to second-floor level. Many of the items weighed up to a tonne, and the window glass units around 350kg each. Their size and bulk made the internal lifts and staircases unusable, so the only practical route was externally, from the street side.
City Walk is a busy retail district, which limited how much of the surrounding area could be taken over for a lifting operation. Following a site inspection, Spider Plus specified the URW-706 on the basis that it combined the capacity needed with a set-up footprint that fitted the space available.
Two different attachments, two load types
The glazing and the furniture called for different rigging. Glass removal and installation was carried out using a Woods MRTA6 glass vacuum lifter working with the crane, which allowed the fragile units to be handled and placed without mechanical clamping.
For the furniture packages the URW-706 was fitted with an overhang beam, giving the reach past the building line needed to land bulky items at the upper level. Switching attachments rather than machines kept the lifting confined to a single crane position and a single set-up.
Fit-out work as a spider crane market
The crane’s control system allowed smooth operation with heavy and awkward loads, which matters more on fit-out work than raw lifting performance: the loads are rarely near the limit of the machine but are often expensive, fragile and being landed into a finished interior.
Keeping the lifting operation to one machine and one position also limited how much of the surrounding retail area had to be cordoned off, which on a trading street is often the constraint that decides whether work can be done during opening hours at all.
Refurbishment and fit-out projects in high-end commercial buildings have become a steady source of work for compact crawler cranes, precisely because they combine restricted access with load types that no goods lift will take.
Spider Plus is an authorised UNIC dealer covering the UAE, and carried out the site survey, crane selection and lifting operation for the showroom project.
Source: Unic — Photos: Unic