World Cup stadium cranes

A total of 19 Liebherr top slewing tower cranes are being used on the construction of the new Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa, one of the venues for the 2010 Football World Cup. In addition, the company has supplied nine further tower cranes for upgrade work on the Soccer-City Stadium in Johannesburg.

Last summer saw Liebherr deliver twelve cranes to the Green Point Stadium project - eight 200 EC‑H 10 and 280 EC‑H 12 Litronic top-slewing cranes and four 200 EC‑B 10 Litronic Flat-Top cranes. The seven other EC-H and HC tower cranes on the project came from fleets owned by the contracting joint-venture partners, Murray & Roberts Construction and WBHO Construction (Pty) Ltd.

Work on the new stadium, which replaces an old 18000 seater venue, is valued at US$ 445 million. The scheme also includes improvements to the stadium infrastructure, such as additional parking space, catering areas, VIP sections, and events offices, and completion is due in November 2009.

The new arena will provide space for 68000 football fans. During the Football World Cup in June and July 2010, Green Point Stadium will host five first-round games, one second-round match, and a quarter-final and a semi-final. As well as the World Cup, the stadium will be used for local football and rugby fixtures, as well as being a venue for large concerts.

Liebherr's work on the project went beyond simply supplying cranes. Experts from its tower crane factor, Liebherr-Werk Biberach GmbH also calculated the best positioning of the twelve new cranes. This included the selection of the cranes as well as the ideal individual configuration of each individual unit, with the aim of creating a technically co-ordinated and economically optimised total crane park.

The twelve tower cranes supplied by Liebherr are mounted free-standing on foundation anchors, with hook heights of between 52.2 m and 79.5 m. Depending on the projected hook height, the tower systems being used are 256 HC, 290 HC or 500 HC.

Four tower cranes from the series EC-H and HC from the existing crane fleet of the Joint-Venture are mounted on rails in the interior of the stadium, so enabling them to cover the construction of the stands in one single large area.

Due to the oval shape of the stadium, cranes with differing jib lengths from 55 m to 75 m are being used, with a maximum load capacity of 12 tonnes. The largest crane on the site, a 280 EC‑H 12 Litronic, can achieve a free-standing hook height of 79.5 m, and offers a maximum capacity of 2,800 kg at 75 m working radius.

All the new cranes have been supplied in Litronic execution, and accordingly can provide up to 20% more capacity at the push of a button. Integrated in the Litronic crane control system are the LMB load moment limitation system, the ABB work area limitation system. and the MDA machine data evaluation system.

As well as this, all the new cranes supplied are equipped with the DFÜ remote data transfer system with Teleservice function, which ensures worldwide dialogue at any time from Customer Service with regard to the current crane operation data. This means that the customer can be supported directly from the manufacturing plant with no time delay at all. Access by means of remote data transfer to the databases of the MDE machine data acquisition system and the MDA machine data evaluation system by Customer Service can be carried out at any time, without the crane having to be stopped or the work sequence interrupted. This means that any problems with the crane can be identified early on and downtimes avoided.