Few crane-operator applicants rise to the top
WASHINGTON: I am perched 120 feet high on a crane above a construction site along the District of Columbia’s Southwest wharf. My hands are glued around a steel railing so I don’t get blown off the platform in a 15-mph breeze that, to this acrophobe, feels like a hurricane.
I slowly free one hand so I can turn on my iPhone recorder. That enables me to interview the hardhat next to me - my host, John Paleologos, who is as relaxed as a Las Vegas lounge singer.
“These cranes are rated for hurricane-force winds,” he said, trying to bring my pulse down and make the throbbing vein in my forehead disappear. “We’ve never had an issue as far as a storm coming up.”
As we speak, the giant horizontal arm 10 stories above us, known as the jib, swoops across the beehive of construction below us, lifting steel, scaffolding and lumber essential to the miniature city being built.
“As they pick up a heavy load, you’ll notice that (the crane) dips down with the load,” Paleologos said. I notice. “As it spins, they tend to twist.” I notice that, too.
Paleologos, 39, is part owner of Miller & Long, the concrete speciality firm that owns this 220-foot-tall flamingo of the construction industry and 18 more just like it.
Safety abounds. A computer will stop the crane and blast a horn if the load exceeds the crane’s limit, about 22,000 pounds.
During a big storm, when the site closes for the night, the crane is left free to swing to the point of least resistance, just like a weather vane.
“We get phone calls all the time: ‘Hey, somebody’s in your crane in the middle of the night,’ “Paleologos said.
Miller & Long is a familyowned local company that dates back to 1947, when Jack Miller and Jimmy Long launched it. Paleologos’s father, Nick, and another employee, John McMahon, bought into the firm and eventually became owners of the Bethesda, Maryland-based mother ship.
Paleologos and the co- owner’s son, Brett McMahon, started the D.C. arm six years ago.
Paleologos grew up locally, attending Georgetown Prep and Johns Hopkins University, where he played lacrosse. He has held many jobs, starting with labourer. He worked in the concrete trade in New York for a few years and came back to Washington in 2002.
“My job is to manage people,” Paleologos said. “I am in charge of jobs in the field. I kind of float” between jobs.
There are seven cranes on this site on the Southwest Waterfront, known as the Wharf D.C. Four are owned by Miller & Long, part of an small army of cranes dotting the city skyline and beyond this year. The US$ 2 billion ( RM8 billion) Wharf project includes apartments, hotels, office buildings, a music venue, shops and even a pier jutting into the river.
“It’s a lot like the Inner Harbour in Baltimore,” Paleologos said.
Miller & Long has 450 employees working this job, making it one of its largest.
“We build the skeleton of the building, columns, concrete slabs and foundation,” Paleologos said.
The crane operators go up in the morning and don’t return until the end of the day. Lunch is eaten in the cab, which is air conditioned for the hot weather. It’s also where they stay in a lightning storm; the most dangerous thing to do in an electrical storm is to climb down the steel crane.
“They are not magicians,” said Paleologos, who worked a crane for a brief time early in his career. “We look for the guys that come to work every day. They show up on time, are committed to being here. They are the first guys here and usually they are the last guys to leave.”
Those big, domino-like slabs on the rear of the jib are a counterbalance so that the load doesn’t pull the crane over.
When the contraptions aren’t in use, they are stored at a Miller & Long yard in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Depending on the size of the crane, they are shipped to and from the site, filling up to 19 truckloads. A crane crew of 10 to 12 can put one up in 12 hours. If Miller & Long runs out of cranes and needs to rent one, it can get one within days. A rented crane can cost US$ 30,000 to US$ 40,000 a month.
Freestanding cranes can soar about 300 feet, anchored by a custom-made concrete block that is roughly 30-feet-by- 30-feet square and four feet deep.
For buildings that soar above 300 feet, there are “climber units” cranes. Those are attached to the building and rise along with it. Miller & Long is one of several concrete companies in the Washington region. The firm typically grosses around US$ 200 million a year and employs 2,000.