The challenge:
Place the steel roof frame on France's Parc Olympique Lyonnais soccer stadium which offered limited space for crane work.
The players:
The Sarens Group
The process:
The 59,500-seat Parc Olympique Lyonnais being built by the French football club Olympique Lyonnais replaces the former stadium, Stade de Gerland. The first major national event scheduled for the stadium, six (Union of European Football Associations) UEFA Euro 2016 football matches, is scheduled for June 2016, so construction activities were at a fever pitch to complete the stadium by the January 2016 deadline. With the major structural work and seating areas complete, work turned to installation of the steel structure that supports the enclosure roof.
For this critical lifting project, The Sarens Group, a specialist in heavy lift and engineered transports, was brought in to carry the load. The company answered the call with its 716-ton Terex Superlift 3800 lattice boom crawler crane. "We chose the crane for its versatility," says Project Manager for The Sarens Group, Sam Voeten. "For this project, we needed high capacity at a short radius as well as high lifting capabilities when working at an extended radius without reconfiguring the boom. The Superlift 3800 delivered."
Nimble for transport
Crews prepped the high-capacity crane for the more than 500-mile trip from its location in Cherbourg, in northern France, to the stadium. Within one week, 46 trucks carried the crane’s body, boom segments, structure and counterweight for working inside the stadium. "We needed a total of 595 tons of counterweight for the structure, central ballast and superlift tray to perform all lifts,” explained Voeten.
The crawler crane’s compact transport design also helped out at the stadium. "The access tunnels for truck deliveries were only 16.4 feet high by 13.1 feet wide, so the narrow transport dimensions of the Superlift 3800 crane helped us to get components inside the stadium for rigging," mentions Voeten.
Once on site, a crew of five assembled the crane and superlift structure within four days. The crane configuration for the Parc Olympique Lyonnais project required 197 feet of main boom with a 138-foot fly jib and 118 feet of superlift mast. The crane’s hydraulic pinning feature helped Sarens’ rigging crew to quickly assemble the crawler and main boom, while the quick connection system enabled the superstructure to be installed within 15 minutes.
Within two weeks of leaving Cherbourg, the Superlift 3800 crane was ready for months of work to erect the stadium’s steel structure.
Superlift 3800 caps stadium
The Parc Olympique Lyonnais design boasts an enclosed roof, so football games can be played in any weather condition. Sarens’ crews were charged with placing pre-assembled segments of the steel structure supporting the roof. The smaller exterior flanges were about one third of this size, weighing 55 tons each.
The roof supports were placed around the entire circumference of the stadium, and there was limited room for the crane to do its work. "Management of the free space inside the stadium was a challenge," says Voeten. “Terex helped us by studying the specific parking conditions for this project and corresponding maximum permissible wind speeds at the various working radii."
The Superlift 3800 crawler crane’s structure was equipped with 182 tons of counterweight, 55 tons of central ballast and 388 tons on the variable position superlift tray, which offered working ranges from 36.1 to 62.3 feet. "The Vario superlift system gave our workers more possibilities and flexibility in the use of the superlift tray," explains Voeten.
The crane quickly and efficiently hoisted and placed the large 165-ton inner structure segments. Working at a radius of 141 feet, the crane hoisted the structure to its drop-off height of 141 feet.
With limited space for positioning the crane, crews worked at up to an 266-foot radius — nearly the entire length of the football field — to position the smaller 55-ton assemblies. These exterior sections were also positioned at 148-foot heights for final assembly.
By mid-summer 2015, Sarens’ crews had the supporting structure in place for final roof installation. The speed at which Sarens’ crews positioned the roof structure gave hope to Olympique Lyonnais that the stadium would be completed in time for an early January 2016 inauguration. "The Terex Superlift 3800 with Vario superlift is a modern, powerful and versatile crane that was the right choice for us to get the job done quickly and efficiently,” concludes Voeten.
