{"id":2941,"date":"2016-05-15T14:59:56","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T14:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minutes.machine.market\/?p=2941"},"modified":"2016-05-15T14:59:56","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T14:59:56","slug":"2941-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/machine.market\/blog\/2941-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Mooney’s Skypicker crane could save millions in construction costs\u2014but not from the Astoria warehouse where it’s been mothballed<\/h2>\n

\"PeterBy Peter D’Amato <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Dan Mooney set out to refashion the city\u2019s construction industry four years ago, just as the current building boom was getting underway. The 50-year-old crane operator and president of crane leasing company Vertikal Solutions<\/a> was helping to build the 34-story Hilton Garden Inn in midtown. The concrete Gene Kaufman-designed building was nothing spectacular\u2014drab compared with the glass-and-steel skyscrapers being built nearby. But with Mooney behind the controls of the Skypicker, a lightweight mobile crane he\u2019d designed himself, the building went up in a relatively quick six months.<\/p>\n

After the Hilton job, contractors and developers started calling, eager to shave costs and accelerate construction of midsize towers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I put that up,\u201d Mooney said, \u201cmy phone went bonkers.\u201d He rushed to have four more Skypickers built.<\/p>\n

“I sunk a million dollars of my own money into this. I did it for the city.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After two deadly tower crane collapses in 2008 and a crawler crane collapse in February that killed a bystander, New York has been struggling with the risks and costs of using heavy machinery on city streets as the construction industry rides a boom in high-rise building. Mooney hoped the crane he\u2019d invented would make skyscraper construction easier and safer. Most importantly, he hoped to provide an alternative to the high cost of using tower cranes, making smaller projects less expensive.<\/p>\n

Four years later, Mooney\u2019s five Skypickers sit idle in an Astoria warehouse. After initially approving the Skypicker for use in New York City, the Department of Buildings reversed course, and with resistance from the union representing the city\u2019s tower crane operators, the Skypicker has yet to get back in the game. \u201cIt was like Herod wanting to kill Jesus when he was 2,\u201d Mooney said.<\/p>\n

An unlikely rival<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Skypicker is an unlikely rival to the construction cranes that dominate the city\u2019s skyline. Compared with the tower cranes, whose metal lattices rise hundreds of feet into the air, the Skypicker looks underwhelming, even downright dinky. It\u2019s only 10 feet tall with a 30-foot boom. That\u2019s the point, says Mooney: The Skypicker can fit in small spaces and is ideal for midsize buildings where tower cranes are overkill and mobile cranes or derricks are not big enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cFootprints these days are really small,\u201d said Mooney. \u201cYou\u2019re building on these postage-stamp footprints. Instead of 100-by-100-foot parcels, you have these 25-by-50 pencil buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s largest buildings still get built with tower cranes because only they, with their more than 15,000-pound carrying capacity, can lift the steel needed by skyscrapers like One World Trade Center and the Bank of America Tower.<\/p>\n

But since 2008, 39 buildings between 20 and 35 stories have broken ground, according to city data. These smaller towers are more often made of reinforced concrete\u2014perfect for the three-ton lifting capability of a Skypicker.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of jobs I was on didn\u2019t need a tower crane,\u201d Mooney said. \u201cIt was uneconomical and dangerous.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tower cranes are used because developers have few other options, in part due to the efforts of a small group of specialized crane operators, for whom tower cranes and similar machines are the key to lucrative employment, even by New York City standards.<\/p>\n

\"\"

METAL GIANTS: A crawler crane, left, is rolled onto a construction site and used to place objects from street level, while a tower crane is built up from the ground and use to lift materials.<\/p><\/div>\n

The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14-14B<\/a> lays out the wage floor for its operators at $73.91 per hour. That\u2019s $150,000 a year before overtime, plus benefits equal to $32.50 an hour. When the operator is behind the controls of a tower crane, he gets a $2-an-hour bump. On weekends, when cranes are moved, pay doubles. With overtime, many union members earn half a million dollars a year. Moreover, rules regulating tower cranes mean the union can demand that developers hire additional workers on job sites, like master mechanics, relief crane operators and \u201coilers\u201d\u2014workers responsible for starting the cranes every morning. For decades, the local has had control over the training of new crane operators\u2014and therefore who can work on a job site. That gives it an outsize role in deciding how and when new towers can be built.<\/p>\n

The Skypicker threatened to loosen that grip.<\/strong><\/p>\n