McKay United

A PICTURE SPEAKS A THOUSAND WORDS: 3D ANIMATED LIFT PLANS SPEAK VOLUMES

Amir Kamaee, McKay United’s heavy lift and transport engineer - MIEAust CPEng NER, examines the benefits of 3D lift planning.

For McKay United, lift planning is an essential part of crane hire.

FOR MCKAY UNITED, LIFT PLANNING

is an essential part of crane hire. On most occasions, the 3D plans provide clients with a commercial evaluation and a clear picture of the challenges and risks.

McKay United provides 2D, 3D, and 4D lift studies to assist with the concept, feasibility, and detailed planning that meet the highest international standards.

Over the past few years, 2D lift planning has become the norm, providing great information and making jobs easier, however, it can come up short in many places when the lift procedure is more complicated.

McKay United crane hire continues to adopt leading innovations designed to improve safety and precision in lift planning and execution.

‘We have developed, amongst other new applications and spreadsheets, an in-house workflow to utilise multiple software [programs] to provide a detailed and highly accurate lift plan, promptly,” said Kamaee.

“3D and 4D animated planning add value to McKay United. Being able to deliver a plan involving work methodology, which highlights hazards that could otherwise be missed, is a great tool for presentations to management, supervisors, crew, and engineers,” he said.

“Time is money as they say and, as a fast-paced crane hire business, McKay United continues to invest the required time in preparing detailed 3D lift plans and to develop a workflow for a project. These will save the client both time and money.

“This is achieved by utilising the very latest software, which enables us to develop a 3D plan but also an animated version of the lift.

“The 3D plan and animated version are updated in real-time by changing the lift plan in CAD [computer aided design] while maintaining all the constraints relating to the movements and maneuvers around crane assets required for the project,” said Kamaee.

Numerical precision is another

Mckay United continues to invest the required time in preparing detailed 3D lift plans and to develop a workflow for a project.

advantage provided by the McKay United application, providing a ‘clash check’ in any given precision.

“For example, an overhead wire or jib bound clearance check is way easier to analyse and mitigate, as crane manufactures provide boom deflections for most scenarios and they are all readable in our software,” said Kamaee.

“The photos in this article relate to a project where we were lifting a new 134t vertical vessel and replacing the old vessel. The main crane is CC38001 [650t crawler crane], in SSL_1 configuration with 72m of the boom, 225t+50t counterweight, and 245t counterweight on super lift tray.

“The tail crane is a GMK7450 [450t mobile crane], rigged with 160t counterweight with mega wing on and 35.3m of the boom.

“During the lift, the CC3800-1 upends the vessel at 41m while the GMK7450 tails to 16m radius and both lift the vessel into the vertical position.

“The CC3800-1 then slews the load over while maintaining the radius to keep the super lift tray floating. It then tracks towards the final position and sets down the load onto the foundation.

“This is one out of many lift cases that we have provided to our clients, and we are currently working on our new applications to implement virtual reality to provide an even better and more comprehensive vision of a project.”

“Being able to deliver a plan involving work methodology, which highlights hazards that could otherwise be missed, is a great tool for presentations to management, supervisors, crew, and engineers.”