Grove GMK6300L makes light work of tight squeeze in London

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UK-based City Lifting has completed its first job with its new Grove GMK6300L, which arrived in September. The 300 t capacity all-terrain crane carefully maneuvered into a tight, downtown job site in London, UK, to perform a series of lifts that few other cranes could have completed without rigging a fly jib.

The job was at Great Ormond Street Hospital, a world-renowned center of excellence for child healthcare, where five air handling units had to be installed on the roof of a nine-story building. Each unit weighed up to 4 t and was lifted at a radius of up to 54 m – a relatively simple task. However, the job site’s central London location meant there was no space to rig a fly jib, so all lifts had to be completed using only the crane’s main boom.

To add to the complications, the team arrived on site to discover a large hole had been dug in the small access road directly outside the courtyard. But with a class-leading 80 m main boom and independent all-wheel steering, Grove’s GMK6300L made light work of both problems, as Trevor Jepson, owner of City Lifting, explains.

“Cranes and holes do not mix but the GMK6300L is no ordinary crane – in this class, nothing comes close to it,” he says. “It has a relatively small footprint and excellent all-wheel steering, which allowed us to maneuver the crane into the smallest of spaces with the narrowest of margins. It then completed all of the lifts in a single day. This was the crane’s first job and I’m delighted with it already.”

To get into position, the Grove GMK6300L’s independent all-wheel steering came into its own and the team from City Lifting carefully edged the crane around the various obstacles on site, including the hole, the sidewalk and local traffic. Once in position, the crane was quickly set-up before starting the first of the five scheduled lifts.

The Grove GMK6300L is now the largest crane in City Lifting’s fleet. The company operates 40 mobile cranes and self-erecting tower cranes, which it supplies to customers across Greater London. Working in densely populated central London, City Lifting often works at night and against tight deadlines.

Grove’s GMK6300L is one of the company’s biggest success stories. Since its launch at the end of 2010, more than 200 units are now working at projects on four continents. Among its many notable features, the GMK6300L’s cab is considered to be the most comfortable and advanced in the industry, a claim Trevor Jepson certainly agrees with:

“We want to invest in the best, most up-to-date equipment, and thanks to the GMK6300L’s futuristic cab with advanced features, it also looks the best too.”