Getting the most out of a tower crane is a key element in high-rise construction. Work doesn’t progress without the right picks to bring materials to height, and managing hook time is everything. After working though a recent pilot project, Turner Construction has found that a smart IoT crane-monitoring device from tech company Versatile is changing the way they run their cranes, with real benefits for productivity and weeks shaved off of construction schedules.

设计ed to hang below the crane hook, the sensor-laden device has a camera that sees what's happening around the crane, and uses machine-learning algorithms to analyze the video and automatically identify everything hoisted by the crane. The system tracks every crane pick, and records it all in regular, detailed reports on crane utilization. In addition to visually identifying the objects beneath the hook, CraneView records the weight of the load as well as the cycle time, allowing for deeper analysis of how the crane is being used minute-to-minute.

Information is sent wirelessly to a cloud portal, where users can drill down and look for trends and indicators of where the crane is being underutilized. The videos of every lift can be reviewed as well, allowing lift planners and site superintendents to identify the factors that may be wasting time during a lift cycle.

Pilot Effort Shows Promise

曼彻斯特太平洋门户（Pacific Gateway）是一栋17层，378,000平方英尺的A级办公楼，特纳正在为圣地亚哥的美国海军建造。它最终将在西南海军地区和NAVFAC的总部设置总部。特纳领导层试图在此过程的早期中相对较早地部署起重机，但决定等到公司的国家安全总监对其进行彻底审查。

特纳（Turner）感到满意后，Craneview可以处理工作场所的粗糙条件，而不构成安全隐患，它就被部署在圣地亚哥办公大楼上工作的两座塔式起重机上。到那时，钢勃起已经完成，建筑物预制面板的举起和安装的下一阶段已经开始。

“I felt through my career we never utilized cranes correctly, but gleaning the data to show that would take some real work,” says Steve Elliot, senior superintendent with Turner, who oversaw work at the Manchester Pacific Gateway project. “Within a week, [Craneview] was shooting us data and graphs and trends on where we were lagging on crane utilization. Paying attention to this we were able to shave 17 days off our panel erection schedule—just a massive gain, added a bunch of float to our overall schedule.”

新利18备用在研究报告时，艾略特（Elliot）和他的团队能够确定现场延误的几个意外原因 - 当时毫无注意到延误，但加起来有数十个重复的起重机。

After studying the footage and reviewing the data collected by CraneView, Elliot and his team were able to work with precast subcontractor Clark Pacific on a better way of staging the precast panels on the ground so the crane could begin the next lift cycle faster.

“We were able to see where the delays were and work with our subcontractor to bring those times down,” recalls Chris Brown, superintendent with Turner. “It was only an eight-minute duration on a pick, but keep doing that and by 300 picks it was really adding up.”

事实证明，起重机操作员，索具和地面船员都没有特别有过错 - 这只是一个没有人考虑的后勤问题。预制面板到达了安排过公路运输的卡车上，必须由起重机重新定位，然后钻机才能将其抬高到建筑物上。

This step only took a few minutes per lift, so the crane operator and riggers didn’t think much of it, but CraneView showed how doing this extra move on every precast panel was adding up over the week.

“起重机需要几分钟的时间进行旋转并再次抓住它；这是昂贵的起重机上的浪费。”布朗说。与分包商会面并交谈后，发现了一个简单的解决方案。“我们拿出了一个重型叉车，并用它在面板上旋转，因此当起重机到达那里时，无需进行补救旋转。”布朗说，像这样的见解剃光了几分钟的每个起重机，最终转化为整个项目时间表中节省的24个工作日。

但是，尽管该团队一直在寻找这些改进，从而从研究CraneView数据中提升计划，但他们并没有期望有一些次要收益。新利18备用“ [Craneview]的明显用法是用于关键路径分析：收集大量数据，请参阅哪个预制面板最长的提升。” Turner Construction项目负责人Holley Vela说。“但是很多次要数据，我们得到了我们如何组织网站的方式，例如我们如何移动垃圾箱，以及我们计划如何实现交货。”

Vela表示，这也使团队不仅洞悉了起重机操作员的性能，而且还可以介绍各种争夺起重机Hook Time的分包商。她解释说：“我们可以看到有多少个面板可以让预制的家伙悬挂，然后才能将他们从钩子中取出。”“数据表明，在生产力下降之前，他们可以做的很多面板都可以做到，每次都需要更长的时间。那时，我们可以抓住钩子并将其交给其他人。”

但是，艾略特（Elliot），布朗（Brown）和维拉（Vela）都同意，仅当与分包商有良好关系以讨论可能的解决方案时，CraneView产生的数据才有用。Vela说：“ [Craneview]的想法可能很酷，但是您确实需要让某人参与并与贸易伙伴一起前进，因此您只是没有收集数据。”“您必须有一个收集数据并实施数据的人，可以与贸易伙伴交谈。”

The Manchester Pacific Gateway project had two hammerhead-style tower cranes, a Liebherr 630 and a Liebherr 420, both from Morrow. According to Elliot, the operators were not bothered by the CraneView, and largely forgot about it once it went on the hook. Subcontractors similarly didn’t object, once they realized it wasn’t there to spy on them but simply to record the lifts and prove how well they were doing their jobs.

“There’s no disputing what the device tells you. When it comes to crane usage by subcontractors, we had no arguments, since we had the photos and timestamps,” says Elliot. “We can say ‘here’s the data, it doesn’t lie.’ It’s a more fair and equitable way to manage the crane process.”

The Metronome of the Project

“What’s great about this solution is it brings a science to an activity that would otherwise be managed by rules of thumb,” says Jim Barrett, vice president and chief innovation officer at Turner Construction. “Almost every second you are feeding it data that can give you actionable insights.”

Barrett first began evaluating Versatile’s CraneViewer two years ago, and after much back and forth, including Turner’s intensive safety validation process, he was eager to get it on cranes on a real jobsite. “The crane is the metronome of the project, it sets the pace for the entire project life,” says Barrett. “If we get a better sense of what it is doing, it can transform the productivity of our projects.”

巴雷特还看到Craneview适合特纳在精益建筑方面的更广泛的哲学。他说：“精益是关于流的：材料和设备是否可以到达他们需要到达的地方。” Craneview给Turner提供了指标来评估这些浪费的动作发生的地方，而Barrett说这些数据说这些数据总体上正在推动更好的实践。“总体工作最终会更加有效。如果起重机缓慢，工作缓慢。”

尽管安全并不是巴雷特（Barrett）寻求多功能和起重机的主要原因，但也有一些好处。他说：“我们看到超重的起重机选秀权更少，工人行为得到了改善。”该项目团队报告了超过2,113次起重机的选择和621个小时的运营时间，该项目团队报告了零钩的安全事件零，接近脚步却零。“这并不是要成为一种惩罚性措施，但是如果我们能看到人们是否正确地站在负载周围，正确地进行操作，我们就可以开始就安全性最佳实践开始对话。”

With the crane work on the Manchester Pacific Gateway now complete, Barrett is hoping to deploy CraneView across other Turner projects where cranes will be up long enough to generate enough actionable data. He already has a handful of projects in mind. “Tower crane, crawler crane, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about projects with longer durations for cranes. I could see us as a company saying this is a general thing to use on every project like that,” he adds.

Versatile的首席执行官兼联合创始人Meirav Oren说：“只要起重机在我们可以与之合作的过程中发挥有意义的作用。”“我们不会接受一个起重机处于正在发生的事情边缘的项目，我们希望成为起重机是该项目的起搏器的地方。”

特纳（Turner）是Versatile最初的飞行员合作伙伴之一，该合作伙伴一直在与特定公司进行CraneView的试验。但是该公司从那以后就开始与感兴趣的承包商更广泛地合作，并提供60天的设备试验现场。Oren补充说：“在过去的18个月中，我们的取消量为零。”

As Versatile scales up to serve more customers, Oren says the best part has been working with experienced industry professionals who were initially unsure if CraneView could improve their productivity. “Steve Elliot told me he was a skeptic at first; but he suspected they could be using the crane in a more productive way,” she says. “My own source of inspiration is proving those gut instincts to be right, and giving them data to have those discussions with their team. So many superintendents have said this [CraneView device] has finally proven them right—they have the data and can show that a decision was right or wrong, and then can see if solutions work or not.”

艾略特说：“这是与多功能的壮观合作。”“我在短短两个月内就学会了20年来一直想知道的事情。”

[Turner Construction和Versatile于6月4日发布了Craneview在曼彻斯新利18备用特太平洋网关项目的案例研究，可以在这里查看这是给予的