HoistCam’s Cameras on Cranes Cut Time on Large Projects

When faced with a large project involving many blind lifts, a company often expects to pay a great deal for a crane operator to perform those lifts. Blind lifts are not only stressful, but they are also dangerous and costly. A crane operator who understands the risks involved in performing blind lifts will charge much more for a project that involves many of them. This can push the cost of a project up much farther than some companies may anticipate. This scenario was well understood by QClad, who recently used HoistCam’s cameras on cranes for just such a project.

QClad Pty Ltd had a huge project which involved placing over 15,000m2 of insulated roof panels with an all terrain crane. The largest area to be covered with these individual panes required the placement of almost 12,000 panels, and each lift for each panel would be a blind lift. This would mean that the crane operator would have to depend solely on his riggers for placement of each and every panel. For such a long, tedious, and dangerous process, the hourly cost of a crane operator would be quite expensive – and it would likely take a lot of man-hours to complete the entire project. Obviously, this was not very cost-effective.

QClad did their research and realized that by installing HoistCam’s cameras on crane, they could likely save a great deal of money and time on this project. By adding a camera to the crane, they enabled the crane operator to be able to see each and every lift. This cut own tremendously on the amount of time that each lift took, and took a great bit of stress off of the crane operator. These facts, of course, made it possible for QClad to save a great deal of money on paying for the crane operator, as the man-hours were cut down to much less than would have been expected without HoistCam’s cameras on cranes.

QClad shared with HoistCam that their crane operator was able to use the HoistCam camera attached to the jib of the all terrain crane. This crane had a vacuum lifting device attached to the hook. With the aid of the HoistCam camera, the crane operator could land each of the roof panels within a meter of where he needed them to be, and then the rigger could guide it in for the last few second of the lift. The rigger could then fix off of the previously laid panel in order to speed up the time that each panel took to place. With the time reduced so greatly for each lift, the overall time of the project was also cut, saving hire time, labor, and construction time. This is truly a case example of the saying, “Time is money.”