Spotlight Rigging
By Mike Larson
Tight-Site Tilt-Up
Precisely planned and executed project includes raising 79’ tall precast wall panels
Alliance Riggers & Constructors welcomed a big challenge when it won the bid to erect the 61 precast-concrete panels and 750 tons of structural steel needed to build the new Carlsbad Performing Arts Center in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Its first challenge was logistical. To complete its part of the project, the Alliance crew of 25 would be working about 170 miles from home for six months.
Also, Alliance would have to transport about 65 truckloads of cranes, forklifts, boom lifts, service trucks and other equipment from its El Paso, Texas, headquarters to the jobsite.
A second challenge was that the construction would take place during the school year.
That meant work had to stop when classes changed during the day, heavy lifts would be made when nearby classrooms were empty, and steel would be hung during off hours when possible.
But the biggest challenge in constructing the 79,000-square-foot, 1,100-seat facility would be working on an extremely tight site to tilt up cast-on-site concrete panels that stood up to 79 feet tall,
Sitting inside the overall footprint of the future Carlsbad Performing Arts Center, Alliance Riggers’ Liebherr LR 1750 lattice-boom crawler crane sets the stage area’ s 79-foot-tall concrete wall panels, which weighed up to 225,000 pounds with rigging.
measured 8 to 22 feet wide, were 8 inches thick, and weighed up to 225,000 pounds with rigging.
Owned by Carlsbad Municipal Schools, the new performing arts center sits between three other buildings on the Carlsbad High School grounds, and stands just 15 feet from one of them.
As a result, Alliance needed to find a way to tilt up and place the precast panels using one crane that sat inside the building’ s footprint and was surrounded by casting beds, many of them also within
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July 2025 • www. cranehotline. com