Corner office: Crane operator enjoys the best view in Missoula
By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian/Photographed by KURT WILSON of the Missoulian
"Don't trust handrails!"
That's odd advice from a guy on a gangplank 150 feet above Front Street. Mike Burke stands as comfortably on the back side of his tower crane jib as do shoppers on the sidewalk in front of Macy's. You get that way when your office has the best view in all of Missoula.
As the new $25 million First Interstate Bank building rises six stories above Higgins Avenue, Burke's been the guy who lifted most of the skeleton. He sits in the white box just below the long arm, or jib, of the yellow tower crane that dominates the downtown skyline.
They're a common sight in bigger cities. Charlotte, N.C., brags it has 28 tower cranes in operation at the moment. But there's nothing to see around Charlotte.
Crane operator Mike Burke looks at Front Street directly below him last week as he unloads steel beams from a truck parked on the street on the site of the new First Interstate Bank building in downtown Missoula. Burke is the operator of the 150-foot tower crane being used on the project. Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian
From Burke's perch, the meaning of Missoula's "five valleys" becomes obvious. He can see over Waterworks Hill into the Rattlesnake Valley, up Hellgate Canyon, across to Pattee Canyon, south to the Bitterroot and west as the Clark Fork River heads toward Frenchtown.
"The first crane I ran was in 1970 in a shipyard," Burke said. "And off and on since then - mostly on. I run all equipment: blades, shovels, spent a few years in a coal mine in eastern Wyoming."
This is only the second time Missoula's had a tower crane on a construction project. The first was St. Patrick Hospital's Broadway Building in 2002. Downtown watchers may remember the Millennium Building adjacent to the First Interstate building was put up with a ground crane, even though it's two stories taller. The difference was the amount of room for construction. There was no parking garage in the way in 1999, so a ground crane had space for its boom to swing.
"We have such a small site, there isn't room to keep all the stuff (construction material), so we keep it at our office," Gordon Construction owner and project manager Kevin Gordon said. "With a tower crane, you have a lot more efficient ability to pick things up and get them out on a small site."
Northwest Tower and Crane Inc. provided this crane and the crew to erect it. They had it in place June 16, and Burke arrived on the 17th. He rarely does more than lubricate the moving parts and perform safety checks.
Burke can lift 13 tons, if it's close to the base of the tower. The load drops to 6.5 tons if it has to go out to the end of the jib, 158 feet from the base. The heaviest load at the
First Interstate site has been 10,500 pounds.
"I can run that all the way out to the edge of the boom," Burke said. "What happens is, people don't understand the kinetic energy in these things, when you start swinging heavy loads around. It's not like you pick it and swing it and the load stops. You've got to kind of follow the load around. It's a little art, maybe."
Kinetic energy builds when a stack of steel beams moves. Every time Burke lifts a load and sets it down, he's got to control that energy.
"If you want to stand a column, you start it 40 feet out, and by the time you have it vertical, it's 40 feet closer to your crane," he explained. "You're trolleying in and swinging out at the same time, to keep it from taking off like a wrecking ball."
Complicating that is Burke's position atop the action, instead of on the ground. While it means he can see both his lifting and landing areas, his vertical perch makes depth perception difficult.
Compared to the weed-patch of levers and dials in the average front-end loader, Burke's control center looks as simple as a barber's chair. The only gauge is a wind-speed monitor. There are two joy sticks: the right one for up and down, the left one for side to side. There's one button to control the lifting power, and one dial with three settings to control the hoist speed. And one button that rings a warning buzzer if Burke wants to get someone's attention without the radio.
No, Burke does not play video games. Despite finely honed hand-eye coordination, as he put it, there's little interest in a game where when you lose, you reset the game. Better to face resetting yourself.
Instead, he prefers paddling his kayak on the Clark Fork River, or zooming about on motorcycles and snowmobiles. Watching the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club members taking their "power walks" around downtown this summer was one of the highlights of his office view.
Burke lives in Reno, Nev. The area has been growing so fast, he's rarely had to travel more than 300 miles for a job. The trip to Montana is the farthest he's been from home in a long while.
That was a relief for Gordon. Finding licensed and talented crane operators is not easy. He said it's even harder to find one willing to commit to a six-month stint away from home.
When he's not on the job site, Burke heads for his mother-in-law Sonya White's place in Plains or flies down to be with his wife Sharon in Reno. They've been married almost 25 years.
His reflexes and vision are the main control of the 281 Leibherr HC tower crane. It was built in 1982. Newer models have computers and digital load positioning systems. They calculate exactly where to shoot a load straight down an elevator shaft. Burke depends on his experience and a close relationship with the "rising gang" on the ground.
That's where the radio comes in. Workers on the rising gang give him terse orders to "load up," "load down," "trolley in" and "trolley out." He almost never replies - in fact, his radio is clipped to a beam on the side of his cabin.
"For the most part, a crane operator is only as good as the guys on the ground," Burke said. "And these guys are pretty darn good."
Ironically, last Tuesday, he didn't know the last names of anyone on the ground. It didn't matter. The only time conversations got beyond two words was when Burke told the rising gang to "Take five, guys," so he could get out of his chair to adjust something.
The days last 10 hours or more. Burke usually climbs up to his seat at 7 a.m., climbs down for lunch, heads back
up and doesn't return until 5:30 p.m. or later. Unlike some crane operators, he counts on good bladder control. He only uses the bathroom on his trips to the ground. Other operators keep coffee makers in their cabins and lower the results
by bucket.
"I've got more electrical outlets in here than I've got in my hotel room," he said. While the operator has plenty of power available, the crane itself seems oddly under-juiced. A 108-horsepower electric motor turns the hoist that lifts the loads. The electric motors that move the trolley and spin the jib produce about 7 horsepower. That's roughly the same as a big table saw.
A construction site operates like the gears of a clock. Subcontracted groups of ironworkers, electricians, cement workers, plumbers and other specialists, and general laborers all work kind of autonomously, kind of together. Burke often stands in the middle, delivering the sheet steel so the cement guys can pour one floor, then the girders so the ironworkers can erect the next one.
"Personally, I think you've got to be out of your mind to do that," Burke said of an ironworker walking on an
I-beam alongside a six-story drop to Higgins Avenue. His own seat is wide and solid, and if the wind ever blows over
35 mph, he heads for the ground. That makes the loads unsafe to move and the cabin unpleasant to sit in.
Getting good subcontractors and keeping them safe are Gordon's top two concerns.
"Then worry about the weather," Gordon said. "It's only going to stay this way another month. Then you're heating things, covering them up, working out in the cold, and the chance for accidents goes up. Efficiency goes down."
Burke's crane itself will probably come down between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He has the steel structure for the sixth-floor roof and the "utility penthouse" equipment left to lift. The penthouse is where all the heating and air conditioning equipment, the elevator machinery and other building service gear goes. When all that's in place, Mike Burke will close his office and go home.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at (406) 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com. Reach photographer Kurt Wilson at (406) 523-5244 or at kwilson@missoulian.com.
