One of the most iconic sports stadiums in the U.S. is getting a face lift as a crew of Manitowoc and Grove cranes helped to expand and upgrade Lambeau Field, the home of the Green Bay Packers football team. The cranes were used to lift structural steel and precast panels for the stadium’s new scoreboards, as well as place modules for seating, escalators, elevators and more.
The Manitowoc 14000 and 11000 crawler cranes worked with a team of Grove all-terrain and rough-terrain cranes on the $143 million jobsite. All the cranes belong to Miron Construction, a Neenah, WI-based general contractor. The company said it chose the cranes because of the site’s expansive area, multiple work locations and radial shape of the stadium. Luffing jib configurations were chosen to reach the heights of the stadium’s new scoreboards.
“This is an ever-changing project that requires many different cranes and configurations,” says Royce Alsbach, vice president of project management for Miron Construction. “We chose the Manitowoc and Grove cranes because of their quick setup times, high-reach luffing jibs and overall maneuverability. Considering there are additions to both ends of Lambeau Field, multiple completion milestones, towering scoreboard heights and a large working radius, we needed cranes that can handle a variety of work.”
The Manitowoc 14000 is a 220-USt capacity lattice-boom crawler crane that features the Can-Bus and EPIC control systems. It uses the FACT connection system for easy set-up and has a Vision Cab, which provides greater visibility and more ergonomic controls for operators. For the Lambeau Field job, it was configured with a 144-ft. boom and 150-ft. luffing jib. The model 11000 is a 100-USt capacity crawler crane and was configured with a 170-ft. boom and 60-ft. jib.
The Grove rough-terrain and all-terrain cranes were being utilized in many configurations to unload structural steel, drywall and other construction materials onto the jobsite. They were also being used to feed electronic components up to the stadium’s new 60' x 150' scoreboard at its North end zone.
When finished in 2013, the revamped Lambeau Field will have 6,700 more seats, two new gates, a rooftop viewing platform, new escalators and elevators, two new HD video boards, a new sound system and several other new features.
