The three Rabobank logos had been a permanent fixture on the 185-meter-tall Euromast observation tower at Rotterdam’s Het Park since 2009. However, since the advertisement contract between the bank and Euromast expired this year, the eight-meter-tall logo signage had to be removed from a height of 174 meters and brought back down safely. Crane service provider Mammoet was tasked with this challenging mission by Licht en Reclame Consultants BV, and used its Tadano CC 38.650-1 lattice boom crawler crane to take care of the job.
“There were two main reasons why we decided on the CC 38.650-1 for this unusual job: First, it would make the required height of 174 meters a breeze to handle. Second, the crane’s compact design meant that it would be able to maneuver without issue despite cramped conditions at the site,” explains Mammoet Nederland Project Manager Stefan Plugge.
To transport its CC 38.650-1 from its Schiedam branch, which was located just a few kilometers away, the Mammoet team required a total of 38 transports. The crane’s main boom sections and jib sections were transported separately, due to space restrictions on site. This also meant that the assist crane had to be unusually placed in front of the CC 38.650-1 crawler crane instead of next to it.
Just-in-time crane component delivery
The tight space conditions at the site, coupled with an equally tight schedule, required meticulously planned part logistics. More specifically, the work site had zero space for putting down any crane components, meaning that everything had to be delivered just in time – something that would normally be a big challenge, but not for the crane experts at Mammoet. In fact, their extensive experience also meant that the team’s five assembly technicians were able to set up the crane in a mere four days, although with a single exception: the boom, which had to wait until the fifth day due to strong winds. To handle this last step, the CC 38.650-1 was set up with an SWSL 96-96 configuration with 250 tonnes of counterweight. For the lifts themselves, however, the crane was able to forego the use of its superlift system, using 215 tonnes of counterweight, since the logo signs “only” weighed 1.8 tonnes each.
High-precision maneuvering between tree and lamppost
The relatively lightweight nature of the three logo signs did not mean that the lifts were straightforward, however. The Mammoet team had to work around two obstacles at the site: a tree and a lamppost that could not be removed and made things considerably more complicated by significantly restricting the available slewing radius: “There was simply no crane position that would allow us to swivel from the place where we picked up the loads to the place where we set them down at a radius of 45 meters, so we had to continuously switch back and forth between swinging the loads and moving the crane,” explains Supervisor Lex Bosman. This is where the CC 38.650-1’s extraordinary maneuverability came in, as it made it possible for the crane to move between the tree and the lamppost with such precision that it never even came close to touching either obstacle.
Job completed to the full satisfaction of everyone
With this perfect human–machine interplay, the team was able to safely remove all three Rabobank logo signs within the available timeframe of 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM, making sure that the Euromast was once again available to the public right on time. Then, after four days of crane disassembly, the whole “apparition” disappeared from the front of the Euromast, with the job completed to the full satisfaction of everyone involved. It is also worth noting that the prominent spots that the Rabobank logo signs were previously taking up are still available – if signage from a new advertising partner needs to be installed in the future, everyone in Rotterdam now knows the perfect company for the job.
