Enerpac has been awarded a contract by leading engineered heavy lifting, rigging, and transport company Burkhalter to extend the height of Enerpac’s 2000 metric Ton (500 metric tons per tower) jack-up system from 20m to 36m for future projects. The near doubling in height will produce the world’s tallest jack-up system, allowing Burkhalter to handle more civil engineering and industrial multipoint lifts.

Enerpac’s jack-up system is a custom developed multipoint lifting system. A typical system setup includes four jack-up towers positioned under each corner of a load. The four tower setup has a lifting capacity of 2,000 metric tons. The lifting frame of each jack up tower contains four hydraulic cylinders in each corner which lift and stack steel boxes measuring 1m in height. A load is lifted in increments as boxes are inserted via an automated system, lifted, and stacked; forming ‘lifting towers’.

“We had considered using strand jacks for a bridge demolition project, however, the barge-mounted Enerpac jack-up system will be a safer more efficient, synchronised lift of the bridge off its foundations,” said David James, project manager at Burkhalter. “Working with the Enerpac team, we developed the concept of a taller jack-up system that retained the lift capacity and versatility of multipoint synchronised lifting for loads up to 2,000 metric tons.”

Increasing the height of the system will involve adding an additional 56 boxes and four strengthened corner bracing units to accommodate the extra 14 boxes per corner. The jack up system is controlled by a central computer control unit. Each tower’s lifting and lowering operations occur simultaneously; the computer control unit’s synchronous technology maintains the balance of the load.