Bay Crane’s Liebherrs Help Raise Semiconductor Plant

Construction of one of the world’s largest computer chip factories has reached a key stage with completion of steelwork and precast concrete erection by Bay Crane, Long Island City, N.Y. GlobalFoundries’ new Fab 8 facility covers more than 220 acres of the Luther Forest Technology Campus in the Saratoga County, N.Y. It will be one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world. Module 1, now under construction, is the first of three planned semiconductor manufacturing plants proposed for the technology campus. Module 1 consists of four major buildings totaling more than 1.45 million square feet, including a Class 100 clean room wafer fabrication building, a "spine" support building, an administrative office building and a central utility building, along with service yards and small support buildings.

Construction is managed by M & W U.S., under a $650 million design and build turnkey contract. The two-year construction phase began on site in June 2009, and microchip production is scheduled to begin in 2012. Total project value is $4.2 billion.

For steel and concrete erection Bay Crane used two Liebherr LR 1300 and one Liebherr LR 1100 lattice boom crawler cranes, on site for eight months. Bay Crane, which claims to be the leading mobile crane supplier in New York City, has recently expanded operations with a new branch. The cranes on this project were dispatched from Bay Crane’s North Haven, Conn., location, a six-acre facility that was opened last year.

Bay Crane provided the GlobalFoundries project with full lifting services, include lift planning, supervision, and execution. “On such a high profile and fast tracked project, it was important for us to use the best machinery on the market, said Bay Crane regional manager Joe Zils: “We operate one of the largest fleets of Liebherr crawler cranes in the northeast, and they never let us down. The lifting capacity, maneuverability, and reliability of the LR 1100 and LR 1300 made them the perfect cranes for this job. ”

The crawler models, with a maximum rated capacity of 330 tons and 110 tons respectively, are both manufactured at the Liebherr Nenzing factory in Austria.