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The swing radius on crane mats keeps getting ignored on job sites
I was on a job in Portland last month and watched a guy set up his matting way too close to an excavation edge. The swing radius of his 130-ton crane was going to put the counterweight right over soft ground when he turned. I yelled at him to stop and had to redo the whole layout with my superintendent. This happened twice more on different sites this year where guys just eyeballed the mat placement without checking the actual load chart swing. Have any of you had a close call because someone didn't account for how far the tail swings out?
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danielr992d ago
You ever have one of those moments where you just know something bad is about to happen? My buddy was working a site in Seattle and a guy set up his matting right near a slope, the crane went to swing a load and the whole counterweight side just sank into the mud. Luckily nobody got hurt but the crane tipped hard enough to snap a few hydraulic lines and cost them a whole day to get a bigger crane out to reset it.
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abby_morgan182d ago
In my experience, ground bearing pressure reports are worth their weight in gold for spotting those spots ahead of time.
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davis.olivia2d ago
I used to think those ground bearing reports were just paperwork for the engineers, but that story makes me realize how fast things can go wrong if you ignore the ground conditions. Seeing it like that really changed my mind.
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