All-round advantage to Advanté with six-legged Fassi cranes

“Two legs bad, four legs good,” wrote George Orwell in his 1945 political allegory, Animal Farm. For Stan Chapman and Advanté, six legs are even better…

Advanté is one of the leading suppliers of temporary office units and welfare accommodation for construction sites across the UK, but thanks to its fleet of special Fassi crane trucks, it is able to diversify into a wider range of services.
Advanté was established in Basildon, Essex, in 1960 as a general construction equipment hire company. In the 1990s, however, managing director Stan Chapman developed a new type of portable site office for construction sites, inventing the concept of ‘instant start welfare’ through its Oasis range of temporary site accommodation. Since 1998 this has become Advanté’s core business.
Needing a crane to deliver these units to sites, Stan Chapman approached Fassi agent Walker Crane Services, based just 30 minutes away in Grays. Walker Crane Services was established in 1980 and has been a main dealer for the Fassi range of loader cranes since 1996. Ready-equipped Oasis cabins are thus delivered to site by Advanté on the back of trucks equipped with Fassi cranes.
A few years after buying his first Fassi cranes, Stan Chapman returned with a very particular requirement: he wanted a crane that could lift his Oasis units, which weigh up to seven tonnes, through 360 degrees – very unusual for a truck loader crane. If he could lift safely over the front of the vehicle, as well as over the side and rear, it would make deliveries quicker and easier, particularly in London, where there is typically not much space for such site deliveries. 
After many meetings between Advanté, Walker Crane, Fassi UK and Scania, the solution devised was attaching a military-style NATO beam onto the front of the chassis, behind the front bumper. Onto this is mounted an extra pair of stabilisers, making six legs instead of four – two at the rear that extend out away from the side of the vehicle, two on the frame of the crane that extend similarly, and the extra pair at the front of the cab that just go straight down. Advanté had been using regular Fassi cranes since the 1990s, but in 2007 its first six-legged Fassi went into service. It now has a fleet of them. 
In this way, Advanté has pioneered 360-degree lifting in the UK. Its cranes are all Fassi F800 or the new F820 models. The F800s have eight boom sections. Its F820 has an additional two manual extensions, making 10 sections in total. This crane also has been supplied with a winch system. The trucks are all 32-tonne GVW Scania rigid eight-wheelers with the R500 V8 engine and a vehicle payload of 7.5 tonnes. 

Diversification

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“The cranes are actually over-specified for cabin deliveries,” says Advanté transport manager Andy Goldsmith, “but that allows us to diversify and work for other industries.”
In a drive for greater efficiency – more speed and less cost – the UK construction industry has in recent years focused on exploiting offsite construction, making permanent building modules in factories and delivering them to site ready-made. 
These modern methods of construction exploit the benefits of factory conditions and new materials to produce high-quality, low-energy modular buildings. For companies like Advanté, already specialists in lifting and transportation of modular buildings, this development represents a big opportunity. One regular client specialises in energy-efficient school buildings, which Advanté delivers in kit form for assembly on site. Thanks to its Fassi cranes, it can usually complete the assembly in just a day. For a school needing more classroom space, it is an ideal solution.

Partnership

Andy Goldsmith says that Fassi UK and Walker Crane have been key to the vehicle development of Advanté. “Their willingness to look at issues and work with us to find solutions has been instrumental,” he says.
“The reliability and overall performance over the years has helped us to maintain higher levels of vehicle operational time.”
The new F820 offers not just 7% more capacity than the F800, but also new features. “The operators find the touchscreen display on the side of the crane very helpful, showing where the legs can be placed and the safety of the crane on the lift,” says Andy Goldsmith.
“We have been using Fassi cranes for 20 years now and our relationship will continue for the next 20.”