SPECIALIST Adelaide-based engineering firm, Aztec Analysis, has broken into the global market, winning its first international contract for crane design verification.
Aztec, which is regarded as one of Australia’s leading heavy lift consultants, will verify the design of seven new container cranes being constructed in Shanghai, China, for installation in four Australian ports.
The work involves checking the design of the cranes and ensuring that they meet Australian standards and specifications.
Aztec’s co-managing director, Mark Gilbert, said the 1,000t, 105m cranes were being constructed by the world’s largest container crane builder, ZPMC, and would be the largest cranes on the Australian waterfront.
“The field of crane verification is a highly specialist area and there are less than half a dozen firms in the world that have the expertise to undertake this kind of work,” says Gilbert.
“The fact that Aztec has won this job over established firms in the US and Europe means that our credentials are now internationally accepted.”
Gilbert says the win opened the likelihood that Aztec could win further work in the Asia Pacific region, including New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. “We have already received some interesting calls from overseas on the strength of this contract,” he says.
“Geographically, we are well placed to pick up work in this part of the world while being competitive in terms of price.”
Aztec Analysis was founded in 1982 to concentrate on heavy lifting, rigging systems and heavy haulage for the offshore oil industry, but has since ventured into the design of cranes, ship loaders and wharves.
It quickly became one of Australia’s leaders in the design of crane lifts, winning several contracts for projects among which were:
The removal of the Adelaide Oval’s retractable light towers
Installation of a 75m mast on top of the 53-storey Riparian Plaza in Brisbane, Australia’s tallest residential development
Assembly of the BHP Petroleum’s Buffalo Field oil platform
Wind turbine assembly
Demolition of damaged structures.
In 1992, Aztec carried out a lifting study for Esso Australia which resulted in a record crane lift during the installation of top side modules on Australia’s first gravity-based offshore oil platform.
The largest lift, conducted in 1996, involved raising 1,425t. Other projects have included the dismantling of the hammerhead dock crane at Whyalla’s old shipyards and replacement of the 140t boom on the Stockbridge crane at the Whyalla blast furnace.
Gilbert said that in the past five years, Aztec Analysis, together with its parent company, Wallbridge & Gilbert, had doubled its workforce to 80 and now had offices in Darwin, Perth, Melbourne and Whyalla.
It has won three of the past four Construction Contractor-Crane Industry Council of Australia (CICA) Lift of the Year awards, including the 2004 Award for the retrieval of four vessels for Mobil Refining at Birkenhead in Adelaide. The heaviest lift in this project was 188t.
“Aztec’s recent successes have increased the company’s credibility on the international market to the stage that we can now compete against established companies to win specialist verification contracts,” says Gilbert.