Reid Lifting holds a 100-year history supplying lifting and rigging solutions to the Australian mining, construction and manufacturing sectors with products such as its concrete lifting systems. The company’s position as one of the leaders in concrete reinforcement and lifting solutions was recently underscored by the role Reid’s grout sleeves played in the erection of 20 precast lift modules for the NEXTDC Merlot 3 Project in West Footscray.
Established in 1921 by Alan Reid in New South Wales, the company began its proceedings providing wire rope to prospective clients.
Fast forward to 2023, and the company’s portfolio now features an array of lifting clutches, anchors and plates, as well as a host of products in the concrete reinforcement, connections, and formwork aspects of manufacturing.
With numerous developments internally allowing the company to widen its target audience for its products over the last 50 years, Reid’s lifting systems centre around providing safe and robust solutions for concrete lifting and anchoring applications.
This was evidenced recently when Reid’s lifting anchors were used in conjunction with its ReidBar Grout-Sleeve vertical connection system, to erect 20 precast concrete lift modules that weighed approximately 25 tonnes each. It was the precast contractor Hollowcore that made the decision to use Reid’s grout sleeves – a system which provides a full-strength splicing solution for reinforcing bars, allowing reinforcing continuity between load-bearing precast concrete elements.
Completing the work for the NEXTDC Merlot 3 project, all of the lifting modules were constructed off-site before being transported to site where they were installed adjacent to the existing buildings.
“We chose Reid’s products to allow for quick installation turnarounds on site, which was a strict requirement from the client,” a Hollowcore engineer said.
“The sleeves require short dowels that are cast in; hence the lift modules could be installed on top of each other without the need for feeding in long dowels through conventional grout ducts.”
Challenges arose and were quickly overcome for both Reid and Hollowcore, as the lifting of the modules needed effective communication and collaboration between Reid’s R&D & lifting design teams, as well as Hollowcore’s on-site construction crew.
This was mainly down to of the spacing of the grout sleeves, the critical nature of which meant the lifter positions needed to be coordinated precisely so clashes could be avoided.
“The main challenge was coordination of the short dowels in the lower modules with the grout sleeves in the succeeding modules,” said the Hollowcore engineer. “The REID grout ducts provide minimal tolerances and hence every dowel had to be surveyed for as-builts so that the succeeding module would accurately fit on top. Additionally, steel templates were made to hold the top dowels and the bottom grout sleeves in place.”
Furthermore, due to the wall panels being thinner than the typical permissible wall thickness for the lifting anchors, further communication was needed between all departments involved to confirm the anchor capacity. This flowed with carefully detailed rigging diagrams that were needed because of a six-point lift being required for multiple sections of the precast modules.
“Overall, the installation was really smooth and hassle free; 3D modelling software was intensively used to ensure that the grout sleeves fitted adequately in the precast modules amid reinforcing congestion,” said the Hollowcore engineer.
“Lifting configurations were optimised to avoid unnecessary high costs while ensuring safety in the precast yard as well as on site, and a big part of that were the grout sleeves Reid supplied.”
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