Premier Cranes & Rigging is doing the heavy lifting for one of Australia’s largest infrastructure projects, the West Gate Tunnel.
Since its construction in April 1968, the West Gate Freeway has served as one of Melbourne’s busiest connections across the Yarra River.
With its innovative design, the freeway catered for Melbourne’s growing population for decades.
Moving more than 200,000 vehicles daily, the West Gate Freeway’s ability to provide an efficient traffic network into the heart of the city has declined. When at full capacity, incidents on the connection can at times bring the West Gate Freeway and Bridge to a standstill.
In order to ease congestion and increase the efficiency of Melbourne’s road network, the Victorian Government and Transurban have partnered to provide an alternative road connection, the beginning of what would become the West Gate Tunnel.
A premier perspective
Local contractors, such as Melbourne’s Premier Cranes & Rigging, are assisting with the delivery of crane lifts for sections of the project, such as the elevated connection above Footscray Road.
The elevated road will add an extra connection for motorists between the tunnels and CityLink, Dynon Road, Footscray Road and Wurundjeri Way.
This will also connect new bridges, which will be constructed over the Maribyrnong River, therefore granting motorists access to a second river crossing.
Premier Cranes & Rigging Director, Steve Warton, says Premier is well equipped to provide services for the delivery of infrastructure projects, due in part to the organisation’s systematic development and growth.
“We’ve not only grown our fleet, but we’ve grown our people, systems and our office base,” Warton says. “We’ve really structured our whole business to align ourselves with major projects like this.
“Our business culture is centred around the ethos that ‘our cranes complement our people’, not the other way around. This basically means that our difference point is our people, the people who are on the ground getting the job done.”
This focus on delivering a result, which is “above and beyond” for the client, was one of the major factors for Premier Cranes & Rigging’s selection to support works on the project, across the West, East and Tunnel zones.
The ‘West, East and Tunnel’ project areas refer to works that form part of specific sections of the project.
As part of its works on the ‘Tunnel’ zone, Premier Cranes & Rigging provided both cranes and crews to complete the major lifts in both the North and South portals. This is also on top of significant general lifting, and barrier relocation works which Premier has completed previously on the project.
Now the company has shifted its focus to the ‘East’ zone, an exciting and new challenge for the crane hire provider.
These ‘East’ works, which include the steel rigging work of the elevated road at Footscray are a top priority, and now represent a major slice of Premier Cranes and Rigging’s contributions to the project.
The difficulty of the works on the elevated road should not be understated, as Warton explains.
“It’s really all systems go on the East portion of the works (which includes the elevated road) in 2023. For these works, they have brought in massive cranes from overseas companies to assist with the big lifts,” he says.
“While using our cranes, the project is also using our people to crew and rig these larger machines. It’s a partnered result, as opposed to just labour hire. Our leaders such as Brad Briggs, Cam Wakefield, Wayne Robinson, Chris Reid and Jay Thompson (along with the rest of the crew) have been integral to this.”
Included in this scope of works is the lifting of all major steel and required rigging, and temporary steel installations.
Warton says the majority of these lifts are 150+ tonne, rare for consistent lifts over a large section of works.
“It really is a once in a lifetime project,” Warton says. “These sections are filled with very unique builds which present a range of challenges. But our people and our cranes are up to the challenge.”
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More of the same
Before becoming Premier Cranes & Rigging’s Heavy Lift Superintendent, Travis Smith began as a Steel Rigger, before working his way through the ranks.
Smith’s knowledge of the crane industry, as well as what’s required to support major infrastructure works, has boosted Premier’s stride towards increasing its participation in projects such as the West Gate Tunnel Project.
As he explains, filling the project authority and staff on site with confidence of performance and reliability is one of the first crucial steps to achieving a desirable outcome, no matter the size of the project.
“We want to give the best result all the time. Sometimes the best doesn’t just mean using the biggest crane, but the best solution for the job at hand,” he says.
Smith is one of many key contributors from the company who have supported the elevated section above Footscray Road, arguably the most technically demanding works within the ‘East’ section of the West Gate Tunnel.
The elevated section above Footscray Road has seen the use of the 400-, 250- and 200-tonne Liebherr cranes, with previous auxiliary works featuring the 250-, 220- and 200-tonne models also.
This site presented a variety of challenges, some of which Premier Cranes & Rigging are still persisting through today.
“Access around the portals, traffic and lifting the columns around all of work areas on the ground were just some of the problems we had to deal with initially,” Smith says. “Once we started with the launching gantry, our priority then shifted to getting around all of the concrete segments.”
The elevated road section is being constructed using a ‘span-by-span’ method, which sees the continuous construction of the road deck from the end to the beginning. Each concrete segment is then placed one after the other.
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Supporting this construction requires precise lifts over sustained working hours, while also incorporating limitations such as a restricted head height.
Smith says overcoming these challenges and more reflected Premier Cranes & Rigging’s strength in establishing and maintain meaningful relationships while going “above and beyond” for a construction partner.
“We were coming into a well-established system for completing these works and our goal was to provide excellent cranes and people, not to re-invent the wheel. Some of the site team have worked on this project for years, so we just assisted in delivering their system and plans,” he says.
“We like to be as transparent as we possibly can be, with everything that we do. That counts for our clients and our partners. We have an open book policy and that starts at the very top.”
As of early February, Premier Cranes & Rigging has spent more than 25,000 hours on site and has lifted more than 5,000 tonnes of steel. This includes lifts for 32 girders and in excess of 460,000 bolts in total.
And this only represents a fraction of the total works to be completed, with more works slated for the remainder of 2023 and beyond.
Bigger cranes and capabilities
As part of its works on the West Gate Tunnel Project, Warton and the rest of the Premier Cranes & Rigging team knew they had to align its brand with a reliable crane manufacturer.
As Warton explains, Premier Cranes & Rigging decided to go with what he considers to be the “Rolls Royce” of the craning world.
“We hold ourselves to a very high standard,” Warton says. “If we were going to hold ourselves to this standard, it was important that we had the cranes to back that up. And Liebherr cranes were the right choice.”
Having previously used the Liebherr LR1350/1 crawler crane as part of works on the West Gate Tunnel’s entry and exit portals, Warton says Premier Cranes & Rigging is aligned with Liebherr’s commitment to quality.
Andrew Esquilant, General Manager Mobile Crane and Crawler Cranes – Liebherr Australia, echoes Warton’s sentiment, saying both companies see eye-to-eye on a number of aspects.
“We’re very blessed to have relationships like this with Premier Cranes because we’ve got two things in common right from day one. One of those is that Premier Cranes is a family-orientated business,” he says.
Designed to satisfy heavy lift requirements, the LR1350/1 utilises a derrick boom and suspended ballast to perform lifts of up to 350 tonnes. The crane is also manoeuvrable and can be set-up with logistical ease, making it ideal for works on major infrastructure projects.
Esquilant says Liebherr cranes are well suited for works on the West Gate Tunnel Project, in part due to their robustness, as well as the support services offered to customers.
“Big infrastructure jobs mean there’s big money on the line, and the project needs to get delivered in a timely matter. It comes back to reliability and downtime,” he says. “That’s why we have people on the ground in Melbourne to support Melbourne projects and Melbourne customers.”
Even more tonnes
Premier Cranes & Rigging’s ambition to work on larger projects has led to the much-anticipated purchase of not one but two of Liebherr’s largest all terrain mobile cranes.
Their first Liebherr LTM 1450-8.1 is a 450-tonne mobile crane, is now available for hire from Premier Cranes & Rigging’s site in Melbourne.
This LTM 1450-8.1 features an 85-metre telescopic boom and despite its size, can travel on public roads to and from the job site.
Esquilant says the 450-tonne crane houses a manoeuvrable and compact design while offering a considerable lifting capability.
“It’s a very adaptable machine and it’s got great rideability. When you look at the boom, the length, strength and radius really stand out,” he says.
“For a company like Premier Cranes & Rigging, and where they are in terms of their development, I truly believe this machine will play a great next step for their business in taking on a greater volume of work and having more exposure to other industries as well.”
Premier Cranes & Rigging has also taken out an order for a second 450T which is due mid 2023, adding further depth to the company’s extensive crane range.
Warton says Liebherr cranes, as well as Premier Cranes & Rigging’s wider crane range, will back the company’s future ambitions, which includes increasing its participation in major infrastructure projects across the state.
“When you look ahead to the next 10 years, Victoria is a great place to be when you talk about major projects and large-scale construction,” Warton says.
“These larger cranes give us a ‘fuller capacity’. During procurement and planning, project delivery authorities can look at us and on paper we can now serve projects holistically. We’ve gotten a larger workforce and we now have the cranes to fully complement our crews.”
This article was originally published in the March edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.