Crane Care 'towering' solution for Apollo Cradles

Crane Care, has designed and fitted four bespoke radio control units on behalf of Apollo Cradles for use in maintaining the country's tallest building, Manchester's Beetham Hilton Tower.

Aston based materials handling specialist, Crane Care, has designed and fitted four bespoke radio control units on behalf of Apollo Cradles (Apollo) for use in maintaining the country's tallest building, Manchester's Beetham Hilton Tower.

Tasked with providing four cradles to move freely and safely around the exterior of the 45 floor, 171 metre (561 feet) high tower block, the Apollo team soon realised the need for a specially designed radio control system to help achieve their objectives.

Apollo project manager, John Moorhouse, explains: "The extreme height of the tower meant that any facilities management team would not be able to move our cradles around the building using traditional running cables".

"With them being so long, the cumulative weight of any cables would been too much for the control panel on the top of the tower to withstand".

"Safety is, of course, paramount and having previously worked with Crane Care on our Forth Bridge project, we knew of the company's expertise when catering for such unusual requirements.

We were therefore quick to see if they could provide us with a solution that would see all of our cradles operated by radio control.

Their approach and ingenuity in arriving at a suitable solution was typically effective".

When first visiting the site, Crane Care radio specialist, Mark Hollyhead, realised that the problem was not purely height related".

"He continues: "Manchester is a busy city and life on Deansgate where the tower is situated is particularly hectic".

""We soon established that the numerous spurious radio signals flying around the area were going to cause frequency problems".

"Consequently, we considered Apollo's requirements, took the brief back to our headquarters and modified five '716 Micron 5' systems to overcome the issue".

"As a result, bespoke hand-held units are now housed in each of the cradles".

The Crane Care solution complements a roof mounted winch system which features a back up winch to retrieve any operatives in the unlikely event of a breakdown.

A glass handling winch travels at the same speed as the cradles to afford a cleaner handling facility, while a lanyard fixed to wire ropes restricts cradle movement in windy conditions.

With radio control units wired into custom made control panels which can be switched to manual if required, all of the cradles are operated from a safe working level.

Easy to operate, the units are used on a daily basis to enable the facilities management team to move around the face of the tower and carry out essential maintenance.

In addition to designing and supplying the radio systems, Crane Care has also been awarded with the servicing contract for their upkeep and as sales and marketing director, Sharon Evans adds, the company's relationship with Apollo has grown stronger as a result of the project.

She concludes: "The Beetham Hilton Tower is a hugely impressive and prestigious building and while we have undertaken several successful projects with Apollo in the past, we are particularly pleased to have been able to find an appropriate solution to help them overcome this issue.".

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