Vanguard was proud to be announced as the winner of the Rigging Job of the Year award ($150,000 -$750,000 category) at this years Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association (SC&RA) annual conference, in Austin, Texas.
The shortlisted companies presented their entries to the judging panel on Thursday 18th April. The winners were then announced at the recognition dinner on the evening of Friday 19th April, with the gala event attended by more than 800 representatives of some of the most prominent heavy lift and rigging companies within America and across the world.
“These awards attract the very best in our industry and to be recognised as performing the world’s most complex rigging job, within the last 12 months, is testament to Vanguard and the company we are today.” commented Bryan Hodgkinson, Director at Vanguard.
“The extensive planning and engineering work that was involved in the project is evident in the precision of the execution. It was a true team effort that required approximately 1,600 man-hours and was meticulously performed with zero lost time incidents. It was a privilege to present our entry on behalf of the whole team and to demonstrate the capabilities within our business to the judging panel.”
The winning project involved a complex lifting operation to upright a bark rigged sailing vessel, named the Europa, at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront Dock Yard in Cape Town. The vessel, which had been undergoing maintenance, slipped from the keel supports and rolled onto its starboard side. Vanguard was subcontracted by Resolve Marine to engineer and perform an up-righting operation to realign the vessel with the center line of the track system.
The vessel, which weighed 650ton and measured 44.5m in length and 7.45m in width was lying at approximately 38° to starboard, it had shifted approximately 1.2m off center of the keel dollies. Vanguard engineered a solution utilising four 186ton hydraulic strand jacks and four independent hydraulic gantry systems (8 hydraulic legs). Four heavy duty header beams were used to support the stand jacks and were installed between the gantries and positioned over the vessel and between the masts so as to minimise any further impact to the masts and rigging.
The strand jack system, which was rigged to keel brackets that had been custom fabricated for the operation, provided a high degree of accuracy and enabled the Vanguard team to lift and upright the vessel in a controlled and precise manner, using a series of controlled lifts and movements.
Once the vertical lift had been completed, Vanguard successfully completed a transverse skidding operation to realign the 650ton vessel with the track system.
