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Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

crainsnewyork.com

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Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#3

Post by GFischer »

schoen wrote: post #2

This article is from almost a year ago; any update on what's happened on this issue since then?

It seems that this might be a new push by their PR firm (which is very good I guess, the article is very flattering and small-guy vs union side and all the right buttons)

http://gothamgr.com/media-coverage/

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#4

Post by schoen »

GFischer wrote: post #3
schoen wrote: post #2

This article is from almost a year ago; any update on what's happened on this issue since then?

It seems that this might be a new push by their PR firm (which is very good I guess, the article is very flattering and small-guy vs union side and all the right buttons) http://gothamgr.com/media-coverage/

It looks like they subsequently received their certification:

http://vertikalsolutions.net/products/

> NYC SKYPICKER CERTIFICATION

> The SKYPICKER MDS is approved for use by the New York City Department of Buildings division of Cranes and Derricks

This article might have been organized by a PR firm, but if so, I guess it's already been successful.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#6

Post by pkamb »

> During the many hours of downtime on job sites, perched hundreds of feet above the street, he would pull out a journal and sketch new ideas for cranes, hoping to solve some of the machines’ fundamental problems.

Per last week's discussion, who owns those sketches? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921433

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#7

Post by jakelarkin »

This is sort of like how when the waterless urinal was first commercialized, the plumbers union blocked it from getting approved in the general building code. Eventually a compromised was reached that involves requiring a plumber to draw an water line (unutilized) to every water-less install.

Unions for skilled, high-pay jobs in highly regulated industries really extract a lot of questionable value from society.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#9

Post by tbirrell »

tl;dr - It's like a crawler (mobile with a boom, street level crane) but you put it on top of something already there. Since its on top of something, it's not a "mobile" crane and couldn't get certified as one, however, it also didn't fit into the tower crane (tall, lifts things) certification. So it got stuck in between two classifications and as a result made it too hard for construction companies to bother including it in their building proposals (the only way that NYC would allow anyone to use it... maybe).
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