accurate positioning of a fixed lead system with the ability to
adjust the height of the lead base up and down.
“Although I had seen them around a lot, this was our
first experience in using the Berminghammer lead system
on a job,” said Kelley. “Considering the size and scope of the
Conley Terminal project, we saw an opportunity to try them
out. It’s a good system that’s rugged and heavy, and it worked
out beautifully for us; Berminghammer really is the next level
lead system for next level projects.”
One of the benefits of the Berminghammer VTL system is
that it proved to be very rigid without much ‘slop,’ allowing
Coastal Marine to drive piles without the need for any falsework.
In addition, Coastal Marine equipped the lead system
with a separate Global Positioning System (GPS) that the
crane operator could access via computer screen, moving the
leads to a precise point as indicated by the GPS and further
speeding up production.
“The GPS calibrates the exact centre of the pile so that the
operator has a spot on his screen where he sticks that pile,
which saved us a bunch of time and money over the course
of the project,” said Kelley. “We believe Berminghammer’s
system saved us about half the time that it would have taken
if we used another system.”
Coastal Marine had two Manitowoc 2250 cranes and a
single Manitowoc 4100 crane working on the Conley Terminal
project, all of which were used to drive piles on the water and
from shore. The company also had a Manitowoc 4000 that
worked on the barge. When transitioning from land to water
– and vice versa – the company would crawl the Manitowoc
2500 cranes ( fully loaded with VTL leads and spotter) from
the pier onto the barge, which proved to be a feat unto itself.
“Our cranes weighed more than 900,000 pounds each and,
to move them off and on the barges, we would place steel
mats on both the barge and the pier, and then wait for when
the tide was right to crawl it across,” said Kelley.
The challenges facing the project were primarily related
to weather, wind and a large number of obstructions.
Fortunately, the obstructions could be worked around and
Coastal Marine drove piles from the shore during most of the
colder winter months. Another hurdle for the project was the
lack of overburden in the water, which made it difficult to
keep the piles in place.
“The sloping rock with no overburden made it tough
to keep the piles within tolerance,” said Kelley. “But the
Berminghammer lead system we had kept us pretty stable.
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT
PILING CANADA 23
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