The ESTA jury members (European Associtation of Abnormal Road Transport and Mobile Cranes) awarded Sarens BV in the Netherlands with the Crane Job of the year 2011 - Telescopic cranes lifting > 120 t for lifting dock walls at the Scheepswerf Reimerswaal in Hansweert.

Work description
Sarens was selected by Scheepswerf Reimerswaal to assist by widering the floating dry dock in Hansweert. The walls with a weight of 465 ton were cut loose and lifted with the cranes. The cranes repositioned the dock walls 3 meter to the edge of the dock floor to make the dock 6 meter wider. The five cranes were utilized for repositioning the walls in two consecutive days.

Challenge
The challenge of the work was not only the monitoring of the load in the cranes but also the tide of the water. When the dock wall was lifted from the dock floor the remaining structure tended to lean over.

To compensate, ballast water was pumped into the pump chambers to keep the dock floor level. Due to limited lifting height of the 700t AC700, the lift could only be executed during low tide. The wall had to stay hooked on for a couple of hours enabling our client for welding the wall to the dock floor. All of this happened during the change of tide.