Two Scopes, Two Cranes, One Campus in Milwaukee

Froedtert Hospital is undergoing a major campus expansion that includes a new six-story parking garage with four elevators, three stair towers and a skywalk that links to a new expansion of its main hospital building.

With limited laydown area inside an active healthcare campus, the project's contractors chose Potain tower cranes to reduce their reliance on ground staging and minimize the site footprint. The overriding goal is to complete construction with zero disruption to hospital operations. Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service understood the importance and sequenced trucking, assembly, and dismantle to protect day-to-day hospital activity.

The garage was designed, and its construction sequenced around a centrally placed Potain MD 559 so one crane could cover its footprint. This approach reduced the number of cranes and equipment on campus and simplified site circulation. Once the MD 559 was erected at the heart of the garage footprint, it became the workhorse of the project, supporting every stage of construction from early concrete work through finishing tasks.

The 22-ton capacity crane is lifting and setting large precast planks, heavy rebar bundles, curtain wall frames and site elements such as light poles and masonry, enabling crews to keep the build moving without introducing extra machines into the campus. When the structure is complete, the crane pad will be repurposed to house the snow-melt system, leaving no trace that the entire build had once revolved around its position.

With a 900,000-sq.-ft. footprint and multiple structural complexities, smaller cranes simply wouldn't have been able to meet the demands of the build. The MD 559 offered the reach and lifting capacity needed to maintain efficiency, safety and productivity in a tight, high-traffic medical campus setting. Its design quality and performance have been a key factor in keeping the project on schedule.

For the hospital expansion, a Potain MD 569 is handling demanding picks that would challenge a mobile crane. The 27.6-ton capacity crane managed 8-ton lifts for the elevator and stair towers, 4-ton bundles of reinforcing steel, and daily steel placements, all while maintaining level, stable lifts. Its ability to pull materials directly from the corners of the site keeps the addition on pace with minimal staging area, ensuring the new hospital wing and its skywalk connection advance smoothly within the constraints of the active campus.

Reynolds plays the pivotal role of bringing both tower cranes to life on the Froedtert campus. The company handles all assembly and dismantling work in-house, providing location studies, engineered lift plans, trucking and scheduling, as well as its own seven-axle mobile crane to erect the towers. Reynolds also supplied the operators who keep the cranes running day-to-day, and it coordinated closely with both general contractors to ensure the project stays on schedule. By managing every aspect of the lifting package internally, Reynolds delivered a seamless process that reduced handoffs, safeguarded hospital access, and ensured two major projects advanced in tandem.

"Our job was to take complexity off the table," said Nathanael Reynolds, vice president, Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service. "By handling assembly, dismantling, lift planning, trucking and operators, we give both contractors a single point of accountability and the confidence their cranes would perform exactly as planned."