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People who live or commute around North Salt Lake should start to notice something unusual and very large over the next several weeks. A huge construction crane will soon stand up and take a bow at the Chevron refinery. It's thought to be the largest crane ever used in Utah.
The "super crane" is so huge that putting it together takes two cranes that are merely big. Once assembled, the crane will be able to lift 1,200 tons. "That's massive," said Chevron construction supervisor Gary Rehmer. "It's beyond big. It's massive."
Crews at Chevron have been stress testing one of the crane's two mechanical "feet" by stacking 1,800 tons of weights on top. Even under that extreme load the giant foot still manages to crawl safely along the ground on huge caterpillar tracks. Once it's built, the crane will stand on two of the crawling base-units. Its boom will stretch 460 feet, the length of one-and-a-half football fields.
Its purpose is to help Chevron with a major rehab job. The crane will crawl a quarter-mile to the refinery's tallest structure. Some refinery roads have been strengthened to stand up to the enormous weight of the crane. Its job is to disassemble and rebuild the coking facility where the heaviest crude is refined.
"It's a lot of work," according to project manager Mark Vaughn. "It's a $35 million job." Brand new coking drums have already arrived. They'll replace worn out drums that have been expanding and contracting every two days for 36 years. Vaughn says, "They go through a thermal cycle of about 800 degrees every other day."
If all the testing and assembly goes smoothly, the crane should be in operation by the end of September. After deadly crane accidents in Utah and around the country, Sen. Gene Davis has pushed for tougher safety laws. It's especially important now, Davis says because of changing construction patterns in Utah. "I think we're becoming a very, very vertical community," Davis said.
In a previous legislative session, Davis won approval for a new law requiring all crane operators to be trained and certified. Before that, he says, there was more regulation of forklift drivers than of crane operators. He says Chevron and other refineries fought for and received an exemption from that law.
That appears to be irrelevant in this case. Chevron says the company will use only certified crane operators in accordance with a company-wide policy. That's a level of safety not required in many states. Davis thinks Utah lawmakers should go even further. "I think we need to take a look at making sure the equipment is safe," he said. The lawmaker says company maintenance logs should be open to state inspectors and examined regularly. "They should be able to take a look at that information and know that there's been reasonable maintenance on that equipment," Davis said.
"Cranes are a high risk business, let's face it," said Chevron's Gary Rehmer. "They need to be inspected. They are here [at Chevron]." He said state officials are welcome to look at Chevron maintenance logs any time they want.
"Safety is really the thing we first think about when we come to work," said Chevron spokesman Dan Johnson. "When we leave work, we want to make sure that everyone gets home safely."
E-mail: hollenhorst@ksl.com
