Global engineered-heavy lifting solutions company Sarens has successfully installed a 925-tonne steel roof structure for the new Air Europa maintenance hangar at Madrid-Barajas Airport, Spain.
The project had been a long time in the making, as the heavy lifting specialist needed to overcome the challenges of logistical delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For key account manager José Martínez Gutiérrez, seeing the project finally come together was a triumph for everyone involved.
“Watching how the roof was smoothly lifted in just a few hours reminded me of how all this began more than ten years ago, when I was first involved in this project,” he said. “Some things take time to be completed, but when you see such an outstanding performance, everything is well worth it.”
In order to lift the 3D steel roof structure to its final resting place at a height of 25m, Sarens deployed four of its 185-tonne capacity and eight of its 100-tonne capacity strand jacks. The engineering team outlined 12 key lifting points around the hangar’s external perimeter to keep the structure stable – no easy feat considering the roof measured in at 140m x 86m x 10m.
The crew needed to keep all the strand jacks synchronised and moving as one cohesive unit, especially considering the jacks were carrying different loads during the lift. To prepare for the lift and ensure the theory would become the practice when applied, the Sarens team test-lifted the roof a few centimetres off its temporary supports, allowing for final adjustments to the lifting parameters using real data.
Sarens needed several weeks to establish the machinery in its place prior to the lift, delivering the equipment from Sarens’ headquarters in Belgium via truck and installing the strand jacks on top of auxiliary lifting structures and towers that were only accessible at certain times due to airport restrictions – something that also restricted the maximum allowed hook height on its auxiliary cranes.
Ultimately, the Sarens team was on site from November 2022 through to April 2023 to install the 925-tonne structure.
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