PSA: Check the ground mats at the new Riverfront site in Portland, I saw one shifted almost 2 feet from the crane pad.

It was on the north side by the main tower crane, and if the operator hadn't caught it during his walk-around, we could've had a serious stability issue with the next lift.

4 comments

4 Comments

the_claire23d ago

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that makes your stomach drop. Saw a similar setup on a site last year where the cribbing under a mat had kicked out overnight. The morning crew spotted it before the riggers even got there, but it was pure luck they looked. Operator walk-arounds are no joke.

mark_chen6214d ago

Operator walk-arounds are no joke" is the one thing that saves people from finding out the hard way. Most crews I've worked with treat them like a chore, but that five minutes of actually looking has caught loose pins and cracked welds more times than I can count. It's boring until the day it's not, and then it's the difference between a written report and a hospital visit.

alice_allen524d ago

My old foreman would've called that a close call.

williamw7524d ago

Honestly, that sounds like standard procedure working as intended. Those mats get checked constantly, and a two-foot shift on compacted ground isn't always a red alert. Maybe the ground settled evenly and the crane's leveling system could have handled it.