Many of today's office buildings are built around beautiful foyers with skylights that allow natural sunlight to reach indoor landscaping. Sunnyvale, CA-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co needed maintenance on its 100 ft high atrium ceiling, but had no means of reaching the top of the structure at building no. 157.
Mark Witkowski Sr, facilities engineer at Lockheed, normally called upon his own employees to handle most of the maintenance needs around the building. Because of the nature of this dilemma, he contacted Superior Coatings in nearby San Jose to repair and paint the 5-story atrium.
Considering the largest entry point leading to the atrium floor was a hallway measuring a scant 10 ft wide by 9 ft 6 in. high, Superior Coatings' president, Hector Arrellano, was faced with the challenge of getting equipment into the area. His first thought was to use scaffolding to reach the overhead areas because it could be brought into the atrium in small sections.
Logistical Challenges
He issued RFQs, but when the quotes came back he was shocked. The cost for erecting and dismantling the scaffolding was $118,600, a huge amount considering Superior Coatings only needed to use it for two weeks. Plus, scaffolding would take an additional two weeks or more to erect and dismantle so the atrium area would be unusable for over a month, a situation that was unacceptable with the holiday season approaching, when the atrium would be needed for a variety of functions.
Believing there had to be another option, Arrellano contacted Matt Malone from Ahern Rentals in Fremont, CA for ideas. Ahern Rentals owned one of the largest aerial rental fleets in the country and Malone had over 15 years of experience renting and selling aerial work platforms, so if he couldn't come up with an alternate solution, chances are there wasn't one.
After reviewing the specifications of various machines and measuring their overall height with wheels removed, Malone determined that the 135 ft platform JLG Model 1350SJP, without wheels, was only 9 ft, 1 in. from the floor at its highest point -- so it could physically fit through the hallway and easily reach the ceiling. Now he just had to figure out how to do it.
Malone called on Markus Leaverton of Bigge Crane and Rigging for advice. They determined that if Ahern's crew could maneuver the JLG machine into the receiving area outside of the hallway, Leaverton could remove the wheels, set the boom lift on roller dollies, place steel plates on the floor, and slide the machine down the hall and into the atrium. Careful measuring determined that the total height of machine, roller dolly, and steel plate was 9 ft, 5 ½ in. total. With ½ in. clearance to spare, it would work.
Teamwork Yields a Solution
On move-in day, Chris Turnwell and John Recio from Bigge Crane & Rigging, along with John Toste and Dan Rapaport from Ahern Rentals, joined Malone and Witkowski to help move the machine. After being unloaded on the dock, the diesel-powered machine was hooked up to a MagneGrip Exhaust Venting System and driven into a 30 ft wide by 60 ft long receiving area. Taking advantage of the boom lift's 4-wheel steering feature, the unit was turned 90 deg to face the hallway; then the wheels were removed and the machine placed on the dollies.
Finally, the team was ready to move the boom lift down the hallway and into the atrium. A Hyster 5,000 lb forklift slowly pushed the dolly-mounted boom over the steel plates while it was being "steered" by slightly moving the front dolly. As the machine moved down the hallway, the steel plates under the dollies were repositioned in front of the machine. Only 7 hours from the time the boom was delivered to Lockheed's loading dock, it was in the atrium, fully reassembled and ready to operate.
Because of the greater reach of the JLG Model 1350 SJP boom lift, the Superior Coatings crew was able to easily perform all of the necessary repairs and repaint the atrium ceiling over a two-week period. When they were finished, the machine was removed from the atrium the same way it arrived.
Using the boom lift instead of scaffolding saved Lockheed Martin over $100,000 in equipment rental costs alone -- plus the work was completed in far less time, there were no huge scaffolding structures on the floor preventing use of the atrium during construction, Superior's workers didn't have to climb up 10 flights of stairs each time they went to work, and they worked in a safer environment, since the boom lift's platform was completely surrounded by a protective guardrail.
