31.05.2009

Crane owner was warned

New York Crane, the owner of the Kodiak tower crane that collapsed last May, killing two men. was reportedly notified that the failed weld in the slew ring assembly of the crane might be suspect well before the accident occurred.

The Chinese company, RTR Bearings, that carried out the welding, the failure of which has been named as the cause of the collapse, is reported to have originally turned down the work on the basis of competence. An email from RTR owner Joyce Wang to New York Crane in July 2007 says: "Honest speaking, we don't have confidence on this welding." Wang says that her general engineer instead recommended that New York Crane weld the part in its own workshops.
Click here to read original report
However not wishing or feeling able to do the work itself and unable to find a US based company that would do the work in the time frame at a cost even close to what the Chinese company had originally proposed, it simply offered to pay more. The higher price was sufficient to encourage RTR to find the confidence to carry out the welding and it went ahead.

New York Cranes Lawyer, Glenn Feurth confirmed that this was the case: "When the price was increased, all of a sudden she found renewed faith in her welders,” he said. Feurth also said that no US company would take the job.

Local news reports however claim that an Ohio based company offered to do the work for $120,000, while RTR did it for “21,710 in a shorter time frame.

A month before the May collapse, a testing laboratory is said to have issued a warning about RTR, after having analysed a similar component produced by RTR for another Kodiak crane in New York’s fleet and found the work "unacceptable”.

In spite of this the slew ring was still fitted to the crane that went down, apparently due to the fact that the lab had already given it a clear bill of health before its was erected.

The public investigation into the chain of events leading up to the accident is ongoing and could lead to indictments being issued against New York Crane, owner Jimmy Lomma and other employees of the company.

Vertikal Comment

The news coming out of the probe into this affair certainly looks damning for New York Crane, however there is a great deal of conflicting and complex testimony which makes it anything but clear.

What does seem to be fairly certain though is that time and pricing pressures to get these old cranes back to work, did cause New York Crane to use the Chinese contractor and to override its initial hesitance. It could be argued that it was paying more in order for the welding company to hire in the skills needed for the work.

Also it did have the parts analysed by the independent lab prior to installing them so it does look as though it made a serious effort to check that the work was up to standard.

All very interesting and very concerning, watch this space.