Harland and Wolff Crane Liftable Building

Rubb Buildings Ltd was tasked with designing, manufacturing and erecting two crane liftable buildings to cover offshore pile clusters.

The two marine manufacturing covers from Rubb’s new ‘BLE Series’ feature spans of 30m and each measure 35m in length. To increase the overall internal apex height of the manufacturing bays to 20.2m, H&W asked Rubb to use a 7.3m high wall constructed out of 40ft containers as the building’s foundation. A custom designed supporting frame was created to hold the containers together and act as the fixing base for the Rubb BLE structures.

The marine manufacturing buildings are designed with reinforced base beams and anchor brackets so they can be easily lifted from their container foundations and moved to one side. This allows the client to then crane lift materials into the space within the foundation frames for various operations. The building roof is replaced to protect employees and materials from the elements. Each gable end of both paint and blast facilities includes a pedestrian door and a 4m x 4m roller shutter door for equipment access.

Harland and Wolff has 150 years of marine manufacturing experience. The company, based at Queens Island, Belfast, Northern Ireland, offers a unique combination of vast facilities and technical capability. From initial consultancy through detailed engineering, fabrication and through-life support, Harland and Wolff are perfectly positioned to support the needs of the maritime, offshore and renewable energy sectors.

The quality of the workmanship from the design drawings and loading calculations was impeccable and visits to site from design engineers and directors assisted in a smooth program of works. The site team worked self-sufficiently and without disruption to our busy daily works and provided two first class liftable buildings and two gable end walls efficiently, to budget, on time and to a very high specification. Between Rubb and ourselves we have been able to create two separate cells 30m (W) x 35m (L) x 19m (H) with the ability to remove the roof off with either of our 840T gantry cranes using a specialist lifting beam and arrangement. Moving forward we would happily work with Rubb again on increasing our facilities.

Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries Maintenance Operations Manager Chris McNally