In India, multiple number of tower cranes working within one construction site is common now. Collision of tower cranes with nearby structures, trees or other tower cranes happens often, which in turn damages the crane structure and other structures. This results in heavy losses and sometimes stalls the entire project, even fatal accidents are happened.

After a year-long market study, we have seen that most of the tower cranes do not have the anti-collision systems, even Safe Load Indicators (SLIs) are not installed. Some tower cranes have SLIs, but are unable to link with the anti-collision systems. Multiple monitor/displays in an operator cabin also get the operator confused and lead to accidents. Frequent power failure at construction sites adds another problems like improper shut down, data corruption, non-detection of radio signals, restart, etc. After studying all these problems, we have developed an anti-collision system with built-in SLI and wind velocity control that gives tremendous safety features for tower cranes of any make/model. These anti-collision devices (ACDs) are coming with a ground monitoring system through which one can monitor the functions of all tower cranes as well as can upload data changes (like height increasing, protect some zones, etc) to all the tower cranes without stopping the cranes. A single display shows the anti-collision functions as well as the SLI functions like load, radius, hook height, slewing angle and wind velocity to the operator without any confusions. This system integrates with the tower crane panels and will take care of the cut-off, alarm and display automatically without changing any OEM set-up.

These systems are developed with micro-processor with battery backup, and thus any power failure at site does not affect the functioning. The communications are made through radio controls with non-licensed frequencies specified by the Ministry of Telecommunication.

L&T, JMC, Simplex, Billimoria, BG Shirke, etc are our major customers for the past 4-5 years. We also conduct onsite training as part of our warranty policy.

The author is Managing Director, Everest Engineering Equipment Pvt Ltd.