Airport Baggage Handling and Management

Company Babcock Airports Division
Date 04.03.2011

The Goliath crane ordered by Babcock for the final assembly of the aircraft carriers at Rosyth arrived at the dockyard today from Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co Ltd (ZPMC) yard, where it has been manufactured. The transport vessel (with a beam of 39 metres and overall length of 244 metres) bringing the crane will enter the non-tidal basin via the newly widened direct entrance, completed in December 2010.

The partially-erected crane (with the girder and upper sections of the legs assembled) has been shipped to the UK mounted on the deck of a specialist transport vessel from the Chinese crane manufacturer’s fleet, along with all components and erection equipment including temporary erection towers, which will be used in Rosyth to complete the crane assembly.

The crane will now be fully erected to its full height on the ship deck over a six week period, before being transferred from ship to shore directly onto the crane rails. These were installed last year (completed in February 2010), involving a total of 380 piles through varying ground conditions into the underlying bedrock, followed by reinforced concrete foundation beams, and the rail track. It will take just over four months to erect, test and commission the crane, for final handover in the summer of 2011, ensuring that the crane will be ready for its operational availability target of 1 September 2011.

The Goliath crane will be the largest in Britain, at a height of 68 metres to the underside of the main beams, with a span of 120 metres to cover the construction area of the new carriers at Rosyth. The crane, which was selected on the basis of its safety, efficiency and cost, will lift and place the carrier sub-blocks, and components including the upper blocks and sponsons, bow block, islands, and aircraft lifts, without disrupting the dockside area adjacent to the ship.

The crane’s 1,000 tonne lifting capacity is provided by three hooks. The individual capacity of each provides a valuable degree of flexibility in lifting some awkward loads with difficult centres of gravity, and allows units or blocks to be turned over, up to a unit load of 500 tonnes. Two of the hooks are suspended from an upper trolley (each hook having a 300 tonne capacity) and one from a central, lower, trolley with a 500 tonne capacity. While the three hooks have a greater cumulative lifting capacity than 1,000 tonnes, the total capacity is defined by the crane structure.

The arrival of the crane also marks the first use of the newly widened direct entrance. Rosyth has the largest non-tidal basin for ship repair in the UK, separated from the Firth of Forth by a sliding gate entrance to hold the water back. This has been widened by four metres to over 42 metres (removing eight metres on one side, and adding four to the other) to allow entry of the blocks from the various dockyards where they are being built, departure of the completed vessel, and return for maintenance, in a grand civil engineering project.

To undertake the direct entrance works, two massive cofferdams were constructed, one on the main basin side and one on the Forth estuary side, to create a dry working space. This included sheet piling to bedrock, and placing large semi-circular steel box section beams and reinforced concrete beams constructed underwater and below seabed level. This was followed by a staged excavation to bedrock at a depth of 20 metres below sea level, on the north side where a new wall was constructed. Construction of the foundation for this wall alone involved 5,750 tonnes of mass concrete placed in one continuous pour. The construction of the direct entrance has taken around 18 months, and involved around 110 workers. It followed successful completion of No.1 Dock where final assembly and integration of the carriers will take place.

Commenting on the latest progress, Babcock project director Sean Donaldson said: “The arrival of the Goliath crane via the newly widened direct entrance is a significant visible milestone in the aircraft carrier programme, and an exciting step forward. The civil works, crane, electrical package and general shipyard upgrade forms a £80m programme designed to make the Babcock Rosyth facility capable of assembling the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers. All projects within the programme are performing to budget and schedule, to high safety standards, and when complete the facility will be unique in the UK.”

Aircraft Carrier Alliance Programme Director Geoff Searle said: “This is yet another important milestone for the Aircraft Carrier Alliance. The Goliath crane will be the largest structure of its type in Europe and will dominate the skyline in Fife. The crane is a vital element in the programme to build both the QE Class aircraft carriers because the ships are being constructed in such huge sections, so we needed something capable of lifting up to 1,000 tonnes. It will be great to see the crane in action as blocks of the ship start to arrive in Rosyth in the months to come and HMS Queen Elizabeth starts to take shape.”

Contact

Babcock International Group PLC
Airports Division
Cambridge Road Whetstone
Leicester
United Kingdom
LE8 6LH
  • +44 (0)20 7355 5300