Close-quarters site logistics: SENNEBOGEN 640 duty cycle crane in use for public works in St. Petersburg

VodoKanalStroy is the name of the public corporation that provides water and sewer services to the millions of residents of St. Petersburg. The corporation has several SENNEBOGEN machines in use for the wide range of public works and sewer maintenance tasks.

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Traffic heading downtown streams all around the construction workers, who have begun to reinforce the city's sewer network while cramped onto a small traffic island. The two 25 m deep construction shafts do not leave much room for the building materials, containers and excavated soil. After all, there is also the yellow SENNEBOGEN 640 duty cycle crane that sits between them, moving material around the site and down into the shafts. Underneath the traffic island, the workers are currently constructing a manhole. The grapple completes the earthworks upstream, while the hook hoists the support structure and masonry into place later on. The reinforced concrete elements weigh up to 25 t and are placed 25 m below the surface to hold the mass of water from the sewage pipes, which are up to 1 m in diameter. Soon the district's accumulated surface water will also be safely channeled here. In order to complete the construction without seriously hindering traffic, the site has to be confined to close quarters. With the mobile version of the SENNEBOGEN 640, a powerful duty cycle crane, with a 186 kW diesel engine and a winch pulling force of 16 t, is on top of things.

Since 2000, Russian sales and service partner KWINTMADI has delivered this duty cycle crane and five other cranes to VodoKanalStroy for a variety of civil engineering operations around St. Petersburg. In talking to the people in charge at the site, it quickly became clear why quality made in Germany was chosen. Chief Engineer Igor Yakovlev explained, "We put our first SENNEBOGEN 640, with crawlers, into service in 2000. Since then, the crane has already logged more than 50,000 operating hours and continues to be dependable – there's no better validation than that. The SENNEBOGEN machines stand out every day with their compact size, ease of use and maintenance-friendliness."