By Susan Gossling Waters For The Port of Baltimore Magazine

ALLIANCE ENGINEERING REPAIRS AND REMAKES CRANES
IN BALTIMORE AND BEYOND

From a distance, the mighty cranes dotting the piers along Port of Baltimore look like small towers built from an erector set. Up close they are giants doing the lion’s share of heavy lifting from ship to shore. They work day and night through bitter cold and sweltering heat. And when these mighty cranes are strained, fatigued or damaged, their injuries come in giant sizes.

In today’s booming port, a broken crane has enormous impact on a company’s ability to keep operations moving, whether it’s manufacturing, product sales or a refining plant like Domino Sugar. Tucked into the southern edge of the Inner Harbor, this landmark operation produces six million pounds of refined sugar daily. Three years ago, the operation took a terrible blow when a jib crane working aboard a docked cargo ship collapsed into one of Domino’s two Colby cranes, rendering it inoperable. Suddenly the refinery’s unloading operation was halved. Decisions had to be made immediately.

Cranes are not built quickly or inexpensively, as Domino’s operations managers soon discovered. Merely rebuilding the damaged crane wasn’t feasible. And Domino didn’t just want to fix the existing crane, they wanted a re-fabricated crane meeting the latest specifications: increased tonnage capacity, the ability to withstand greater wind speeds during operation, and additional height.

How do you fix a giant crane, making a modern crane out of an old one? That was the challenge facing Alliance Engineering, Inc., a 15-year-old, full-service, engineering firm headquartered in Richmond, Va., with offices in Linthicum Heights, Md.

“In our maritime engineering division, we focus on projects above the waterline, and cranes are a big part of that work,” says Alliance Engineering President Jim Burnette. “We’ve brought our real world engineering experience into this market because we saw an opportunity to be competitive with mostly out-of-town firms. That’s proven to be good for us and good for the companies around the Port of Baltimore.”

Domino Sugar turned to Alliance in its time of crisis. Not only did it want a better crane, it wanted a better crane fast. The good news was that the mechanical sections of the damaged crane were salvageable, but that also meant each movable part – hoist and pulley mechanics – had to be precisely measured in the field to ft the crane’s new steel skeleton.

“Alliance was with me every step of the way, “ says Domino’s project engineer, Mark Pleiss. “ We couldn’t have tackled what we did without their expertise and dedication.”

Alliance’s lead engineer, Vince Kokal, worked day and night to design the new structure, managing each new phase of design, bidding, fabrication, and installation. In the end, the newly re-fabricated crane, weighing in at 225 tons, 110 feet tall, and painted “Domino blue,” cost 40 percent less and was delivered two months faster than building a new one from scratch.

“Of all the cranes I’ve worked on, this was the biggest challenge for me professionally,” says Kokal, whose office computer still displays a photograph of the Domino crane being delivered by barge.

While Domino’s Colby crane may have been the biggest challenge, Alliaance Engineering has worked on many large cranes on the East Coast, offering continuous facilities support for more than 800 of the structures. Whether by necessity or choice, many owners of aging cranes are looking for solutions to prolong the life and improve the quality of these hard working towers.

“It’s often the case that drawing for a 50-year-old crane either are inaccurate or no longer exist,” says Kokal. “We regularly do a full investigative engineering survey and computer model before we can determine appropriate modifications to a particular crane.”

This was the case with an older, unloading crane owned by Eastalco Aluminum Company near Baltimore’s Key Bridge. Alliance’s engineering team spent two weeks measuring the crane’s base. Using ultrasonic thickness gauges, laser levels, electronic distance meters and a variety of other high- and low- tech tools, a precise three-dimensional computerized drawing was generated to serve as a “surgeon’s” map. Eastalco’s crane received a clean bill of health and remains in continuous service.

With an array of engineering tools at his disposal, Kokal can work what may seem like miracles. Recently, his team completed the analysis and plans to transform a 40-ton bridge crane into a 60-ton bridge crane. The project, for International Steel Group (ISG), the new owners of the former Bethlehem Steel, means ISG doesn’t need to purchase a bigger piece of equipment. “ I think many companies realize it’s less of a risk to hire Alliance because of our reputation for value and integrity, than to venture into unknown territories,” says Burnette.

Burnette says Alliance’s business in Maryland is expanding faster than in Virginia, a trend he expects to remain true for some time to come. “Our growth is driven by 90 percent repeat business,” he says, “ and I attribute that to the talent in our key employees.” Burnette is quick to point out that a crane Vince Kokal recently saved for a client in a southern port was the same crane Burnette converted from a clamshell unloader to a shuttle conveyor coal loader 25 years earlier. “With engineering technology advancing so quickly, you tend to see the same ‘patients’ receiving multiple upgrades over a lifetime of work,” says Burnette. “It’s our job to make technology work for industry – that’s our specialty.”

Whether in an emergency or in need, at Alliance Engineering, Inc., the crane doctors are in.