Hiab, part of Cargotec, invites the world’s best crane operators to submit their entries for the third World Crane Championship. Local heats begin soon, and the winner will be crowned at the finals, which will take place at the IAA Commercial Vehicle Show in Hannover, Germany, on 22-23 September 2018.
“In this day and age, programme is critical to contractors and businesses,” attests Angus Cormie, Chief Engineer at J&D Pierce, one of the UK’s leading structural steel provider. As a champion designer, supplier and installer of quality steelwork, J&D Pierce offers an end-to-end service that dramatically reduces the supply chain
Hiab, part of Cargotec, invites the world’s best crane operators to submit their entries for the third World Crane Championship. Local heats begin soon, and the winner will be crowned at the finals, which will take place at the IAA Commercial Vehicle Show in Hannover, Germany, on 22-23 September 2018. The World Crane Championship aims to showcase the skills and abilities of loader crane operators from around the world, and give them the chance to test their skills against their peers, using the latest load handling products from Hiab. The first-ever World Crane Championship in 2015 started a new tradition in the industry, and generated such huge interest, that Hiab decided to make it a biannual event. The idea of the contest is quite simple: using a HIAB X-HiPro 232 crane, move water cans from a truck, accurately and with precision, around a circuit of obstacles, in the shortest time possible. The operator with the lowest time and fewest faults is crowned the winner, and takes home a prize worth €25,000. The first qualification rounds for the 2018 contest will take place in Germany and Austria in early March. To date, there are entries from 16 countries, including Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, The UK and Ireland, Spain, France, Poland, Slovenia, and Israel. The winner of the second World Crane Championship in 2016 was Tim Hansen, from Denmark, with a time of 2 minutes, 51:42 seconds. Aged just 25, Mr Hansen, of Tim S Hansen ApS, and the third generation of crane operators in his family, said, “Winning was a bit unreal.but it felt pretty good to win the prize and be able to call myself World Crane Champion.” His modesty belies his dexterity and agility at operating the HIAB X-HiPro-equipped crane with pin-sharp precision and accuracy whilst in the glare of the spotlight. The operators are the key people in any crane business. It is their skill and precision in operating a crane that determines how quickly and safely goods can be delivered to end-users. “The competitors take their entry into the competition very seriously,” says Lotta Sjöberg, Global Marketing Manager, Loader Cranes, Hiab. “I have been told that some set up a replica course in their work yards, and practice on a daily basis to hone their skills. They ask me all sorts of questions about the rules, the penalty system, and the course. So, this year, we are keeping all elements of the test course, the crane, and the truck the same, because contestants want to test themselves against the two previous winners on a like-for-like basis, and try to beat them.” There is intense, albeit good-natured, competition amongst the contestants, who are proud to represent their companies and their countries. “Afterwards, they swap contact details, so they can stay in touch with one another,” says Sjöberg. “If you are part of this competition, you become part of a wider Hiab family, and people really like that.” Indeed, feedback from contestants and their companies is very positive. Being the country-level champion is almost as good as being the world champion. “We are proud to have the World Crane Championship UK-country champion driving our company vehicles,” said Gary Halford, Plant Manager at Agetur UK Ltd, after the 2016 contest. And the winning UK-country driver, Trevor Tack, expressed his thanks to the whole Hiab family for an experience he will never forget. “We invite competitors from around the world to take up the challenge of testing themselves against each other,” says Joakim Andersson, Senior Vice President, Loader Cranes, Hiab. “I am looking forward to this year’s contest, and seeing the breathtaking levels of skill and precision that will be demonstrated by our finalists. We are proud to be able to host this competition, and be a part of the growing Hiab family of crane operators around the world.” For more information, and to sign up to compete in the qualification rounds, please visit www.worldcranechampionship.com.
“In this day and age, programme is critical to contractors and businesses,” attests Angus Cormie, Chief Engineer at J&D Pierce, one of the UK’s leading structural steel provider. As a champion designer, supplier and installer of quality steelwork, J&D Pierce offers an end-to-end service that dramatically reduces the supply chain and provides clients a competitive edge in terms of both time and cost. As Cormie continues, “With an all-encompassing structural steel service, we eliminate the need for multiple parties, manage interfaces and offer guaranteed excellence, every time, for every client.” Established in 1975, J&D Pierce has retained its family-run approach while diversifying and expanding into areas beyond purely steel fabrication and is now able to provide a comprehensive service from early design right through costing, fabrication and protective treatment to erection. A specialist in design and fabrication, J&D Pierce has continued to develop further capabilities, and can effectively carry a project through from inception to completion. Although subcontracting can be an economical way of procuring specialist works, it can also give rise to various kinds of problems. Within differences of opinion, organisation and interfacing issues, it can present significant delays and programme slippages for main contractors and become a cost burden to which clients simply cannot subscribe. Attending to that concern and delivering an end-to-end service, J&D Pierce offers an alternative, financially risk-free mode of construction, as Cormie makes clear: “Because we don’t sub-contract any services out, we have complete control over a project. Main contractors like to de-risk; if they can hire a single firm to carry out all works they will because it prevents problems of coordinating works on site and allows them to concentrate on their own objectives. We allow them programme certainty; our wide range of skills and expertise more than capable of shouldering an entire contract.” J&D Pierce has established itself as a one-stop-shop in structural steelwork and boasts divisions dedicated not only to design, production, erection, roofing and cladding, but stretching right the way across transport, delivery, crane, and access. It’s with concentrated investment that the company has been able to develop its services and establish manufacture, delivery and erection processes which are each unrivalled in both speed or quality and, combined, provide significant advantages to customers. That broad spectrum of capabilities is only set to widen as the development of new facilities adjacent to J&D Pierce’s existing site gets underway. The 15-acre development beside their existing facilities will host a new steel fabrication process for the manufacture of plate girders. The company is investing millions in state-of-art tooling equipment and technology for this for external sales and with a view to gaining even greater production efficiency. Primarily though, the new facilities will enable the company to take on an even greater proportion of works, as Cormie details further, “There are some specialist products that are used, particularly in high-rise buildings, that we would ordinarily have to outsource from specialist manufacturers. The new facilities will allow us to start manufacturing those ourselves therefore affording us greater control over production, as well as the ability to shorten the lead-in times and enhance the programme we can offer our clients.” Indeed, the company’s development has long been informed by the desire to exceed clients; expectations across the board. Despite widening its catalogue of services, J&D Pierce has only further emphasised quality within their expansion, with state of the art machinery incorporating intelligent software and direct linkage with J&D Pierce’s design system, it is also highly efficient, can identify how best to to minimise wastage and produce a precise replica of the computational drawing on-screen. So esteemed in design is J&D Pierce that it regularly offers both partial and full design, as well as design advice on projects. Whether approached at the stage of conception, integration, value engineering or connection analysis, the company is able to provide critical design solutions via a number of industry standard software operated by experienced engineers. With unrivalled expertise in design at a planning, development and operational level, the company’s manufacture and erection processes are significantly enhanced and J&D Pierce has, on more than one occasion, found itself heading the pack on construction projects. During a recent contract at Bristol Sports Club, the company was tasked to redevelop the West Stand and, as an informed contractor, paved the way for others to follow, as Cormie outlines: “The aim was to tie in work with the existing stand and erect a complicated three-dimensional roof design with a main trusse spanning 108m. We carried out the interface detail and, despite having our own cladding division, worked alongside an external cladding supplier and the precast supplier sourced by the main contractor. “We had a very tight footprint in which to erect the project and immediately envisaged the difficulties that would pose to both ourselves and the cladders. We re-thought the engineers’ methodology of erection (a system of building temporary towers to build the truss on) and suggested that we could, in fact, build the entire truss from the ground and lift it into place with two large cranes. While it took intricate crane movement for final placement, it meant that we had much better safety control because the majority of work was conducting on the ground rather than at height, as well as giving us significant advantage in programme, preventing stoppages and delays in schedule.” Characterised by its ability to add value and decrease the costs associated with programme, J&D Pierce also designed bespoke hinge details on the supporting rafters; the innovative solution allowed the company to pre-erect the rafters in pairs and then swing them up to the truss and complete the structure in less than a day, As a specialist in design, manufacture and construction, the company has a key understanding of each phase of development and effectively guarantees a project’s success with quality and control endowed. Of course, those ethics and successes come as the result of focused attention on training and development. J&D Pierce has worked hard to up-skill its
