JLG Boom Lifts Aid in Enormous Steel Erection Project at Chicago Convention Center

Enlarge Image Danny's Construction Co. is using 22 JLG boom lifts to erect 600 tons of steel per week on the McCormick Convention Center addition project.

July 1, 2005 -- Already the largest convention center in North America, McCormick Place in Chicago is not content on resting on its laurels in the record books. Isn't bigger always better? When it opens in 2008, the latest addition to the giant exposition facility currently under construction will feature 250,000 square feet of meeting space and 470,000 square feet of exhibition space, increasing the convention center's floor space by 33%.

 

Helping to erect an estimated 30,000 tons of steel are 22 JLG boom lifts used by Danny's Construction Company, Inc. (DCCI) of Gary, Ind., and rented from Lemont, Ill.-based Illini Hi-Reach. Erecting steel at a rate of 600 tons per week, DCCI insisted on using JLG boom lifts with SkyWelder® welding systems for the job, explains Jerry Lodovisi, the Illini Hi-Reach representative on the project. “The boom lifts have platform heights up to 135 feet and incorporate a Miller® Electric 280-amp stick welder,” he says. “It's one of the reasons why they are erecting steel so quickly. If I were an ironworker, I'd insist on a JLG boom lift with a SkyWelder package too.”

 

Of the 22 boom lifts getting a work out on the jobsite, Lodovisi explains that all of the machines are 80 feet or larger. “We've got about 10 80s out there, two 120 footers and 10 of the 135s,” he says. “It's a rather large steel erection project. They actually started out with four boom lifts in the beginning, and the project's grown to this proportion from there.”

 

Lodovisi says that contractors are asking for the SkyWelder package more all the time. “Once they see that the machine is equipped with the sky power package, they want to go with it,” he says. “On this particular job they ordered them without this feature originally, but a few of the general foremen said ‘we're going to have to have them' right off the bat.”

 

As far as other lifting equipment on the job, Lodovisi says he anticipates scissor lifts will be forthcoming once some of the other subcontractors get involved. A local crane rental company also has a few lattice-boom crawler cranes and telescopic handlers on-site. The steel erection phase of the project is expected to be finished by the end of the year.