Singapore subway construction uses Manitowoc

Two crawler cranes, a 100 tonne capacity Manitowoc 11000-1 and an 80 tonne capacity 8500-1, were put to work by Fuchi Pte Ltd. supporting strutting and waler positioning at Springleaf Station.

The new station, on the expanding Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) subway system in Singapore, is part of a series of stations comprising the new Thomson Line, which is being built by the Singaporean government’s Land Transport Authority (LTA).

Work for the cranes started in 2015 and will conclude in 2018. When the project is completed in 2019, the 30 kilometre Thomson Line will have 22 stations, including six interchange stations connecting to all other existing MRT lines.

The first part of Fuchi’s work involves lifting steel struts, which weigh between 2 and 6.5 tonnes, and lowering them into the excavated ground to support the earth while the concrete walls are built. These struts are lifted by the crawler cranes at radii to 16 metres. To handle the lifting work, the 11000-1 was rigged with 37 m of boom, and the 8500-1 with 36 m.

“Fuchi has approximately 30 projects running simultaneously, of which 10 of them are MRT projects. Some of the ongoing MRT projects include the Caldecott, Outram Park and Gardens by the Bay stations, which are also part of the Thomson Line,” said Harjit Singh, project manager at Fuchi.

“Given the intensity of our operations, we cannot afford any downtime so the cranes we use must be highly reliable. From the time we purchased our first Manitowoc cranes, we were impressed with the quality of its engineering and have relied on them ever since.”