Capital Equipment In Construction

Technology improved on cranes for efficient operation.

- Victor Moolman

Technological advancements over the years have meant Midrand-based tower cranes and lifting solutions company SA French has been able to install trackers on its crane fleet, ensuring more efficient operations during construction projects.

“With our laptops or cellphones connected to the tracking system on the cranes, we can view cranes’ operational activity from the time they are put up for use and actual working hours. This enables us to effectively plan when a crane will need maintenance,” says SA French MD Quentin van Breda.

He points out that crane maintenance overseas has become a ‘required maintenance’ instead of the usual preventive measure that was used on older cranes, which means that only the parts that need to be repaired are repaired. This system, known as CraneSTAR, which is supplied by Potain, for which SA French is the South African distributor, can have a module fitted to each crane and through the global system for mobile communication connect to the desk of a plant manager.

“We plan our maintenance around our tracker and maintenance problems based on extended working hours are alleviated, saving a lot of arguments with clients. If [they] . . . call and tell us a crane isn’t operational, we can easily check and, on occasions, have found that the faulty crane is not ours,” Van Breda highlights.