TopLift 2023: The winner is announced

We selected the top ten shortlist but the decision was placed in the hands of you, our readers, to vote for your favourite lift and decide the number one spot in our 2023 IC TopLift competition. The results are in.

Aided by a digital voting form both on our website and our social media channels, we had a large turnout of responses this year. We’d like to thank everyone who got involved and made the effort to submit a vote. All the shortlisted lifts were worthy contenders that helped showcase the innovation and groundbreaking achievements of our industry.

There was, however, a stand-out winner with just under a third of the votes. It was Entry 8, Bridging Brilliance, a project by Marr Contracting in Brisbane, Australia, using one of its giant M2480D tower cranes. A very close second place was Entry 10 – Sun Construction, the remote controlled lifting work for the ITER nuclear fusion project in France and, coming in close behind, was Entry 1 – Offshore Operations, Mammoet’s onshore turbine assembly for the Hywind Tampen wind farm off the Norwegian coast.

(Photo: Marr Contracting)

(Photo: Marr Contracting)

Equipment user: Marr Contracting
Equipment used: Favelle Favco M2480D
Location: Australia

Marr Contracting was awarded the subcontract to deliver specialized heavy lifting crane services on the Kangaroo Point Green Bridge in Brisbane, Australia. Located in Brisbane’s busy river, the key challenge was how to construct the bridge while minimising potential impacts on the ferries and vessels that use the Brisbane River daily. Marr will undertake 10 major lifts and has completed its first, lifting a 25 metre by 25-metre-wide working platform using its Favelle Favco M2480D tower crane. The heaviest lift the tower crane will undertake for the project is 180 tonnes and will be the 28 metre tall pre-fabricated steel masthead.

(Photo: ITER)

(Photo: ITER)

Equipment user: ITER
Equipment used: Bridge cranes
Location: France

At the ambitious ITER project in southern France, scientists are hoping to demonstrate nuclear fusion as a safe, plentiful and commercially viable source of energy for the Earth. The ITER machine will become the largest tokamak or nuclear fusion reactor in the world, comprising around a million components and weighing around 23,000 tonnes. Central to the machine’s assembly are two sets of enormous yellow remotely-operated bridge cranes. The cranes are designed to travel 175 metres on rails and their main beams span 47 metres. In May, the ITER assembly team completed one of its most complex lifts to date, using the bridge cranes to extract the first 1,380 tonne wedge-shaped pre-assembled segment of the vacuum vessel and slowly move it into the tokamak pit with millimetre accuracy.

(Photo: Mammoet)

(Photo: Mammoet)

Equipment user: Mammoet
Equipment used: PTC200-DS ring crane
Location: Norwegian North Sea

International heavy lifting and transport specialist Mammoet handled the onshore load-in, marshalling and turbine assembly work for the Hywind Tampen wind farm, 140 km off the Norwegian coast. The 8.6 MW Siemens Gamesa SG 8.0-167 DD turbines had to be lifted in port onto 107 metre spar buoy floating foundations due to the Tampen area seabed geology. This had to be done in port before the assembled turbines could be towed to the site. Weather conditions were an issue due to the large wind-catching surface (sail area) of the components. Alongside a PTC200-DS ring crane, 24 axle lines of SPMT and a range of smaller cranes were used to handle the movement of components, as well as a Liebherr LR 1750 crawler crane to assist the PTC during lifts that required rotation of components. Watch a video of the project here: https://youtu.be/e8eRNuBlyDA.