Over 15 years ago, Allison Leil, founder and then-president of Nova Scotia-based A.W. Leil Cranes & Equipment took a chance that, even decades later, continues to pay dividends for the company.

Leil brought two brand-new crawler cranes into his company’s fleet, one 400 tonne-capacity (440 USt) machine and the other at 600 tonnes (660 USt). Despite the positive impact it has since brought, the purchase inspired a cocked eyebrow or two, not only for being an unusually large investment in these cranes for the time, but also due to the relatively smaller operational size of A.W. Leil, said current president Ryan Long.

The purchase was made due to Leil’s belief in the growing impact of the wind energy sector on the area’s construction and infrastructure projects. These debut entries into A.W. Leil’s wind energy fleet allowed the company to get a foothold on the area’s sector just as it was beginning to take off, and while the 400-tonne model was recently sold, both cranes remain in operation today.

“It’s a big, big part of our business,” said Long. “Because Mr. Leil had the foresight to do that, they had great success and put up the majority of wind turbines through Atlantic Canada in the early days, but both of those cranes are still used on a regular basis, and what we’re finding is those cranes still have a great spot to maintain the 500 turbines that are standing in Atlantic Canada now.”

As A.W. Leil’s wind fleet continues to perform maintenance duties across much of the influx of turbines that arrived to the Atlantic provinces in the first two decades of the millennium, new demands are emerging from the increased urgency of Canada’s carbon goals and renewable energy’s role in achieving them – demands for bigger turbines, and more importantly, bigger cranes to put them together.

Eager to meet this demand head-on – and taking a page or two out of A.W. Leil’s playbook of the past – Long has made a major purchase to his company’s fleet to keep them competitive in meeting the need for these larger projects.

Meet the new boss

The newest addition to A.W. Leil’s fleet is the Liebherr LG 1750-SX; a 750-tonne (850 USt) lattice boom mobile crane. While Long mentions that other fleets in Ontario and Alberta also count the LG-1750 among their ranks, this latest purchase brings the first model of this crane to Canada’s east coast.

A.W. Leil recently received their delivery for the massive crane, which due to its size was transported to them across a total of 72 tractor trailers.

The LG1750-SX combines a traditional lattice boom with a rubber-tired eight-axle carrier, and travels at a width of three metres between turbines versus the standard 10 to 12 metre width of crawler cranes traditionally used on wind energy projects.

“This new crane takes the upper works of a crawler crane, and mounts that on a rubber-tired truck crane chassis,” Long explained. “Now, when we move between turbines, we’re actually three meters wide – it’s a big, big savings to customers and to developers, and it also lessens the footprint of the project. We feel that having this unique offering is going to make a big difference to prospective clients.”

The model is also equipped with its optional super lift ballast and derrick systems, along with its three enhanced boom stability additions, the SX, SX-2, and SX-3 systems, which allows for longer and safer boom reach. Combined, A.W. Leil’s LG-1750-SX has the capacity of operating at a maximum tip height of 172 metres in the air.

“I don’t know if I’d ever want to see that high up in the air, but that is what it’s capable of – its lifting capacities are much greater than our 600-tonne crawler,” said Long.

While Long and his company are among a select few in the country to count this crane’s power among their fleets, he mentioned that their machine is singular across the country in being the only one to feature both the SX-2 and SX-3 systems, and therefore boasts the highest lifting capacity at maximum tip heights among all other Canadian models.

It’s a massive purchase – especially relative to the size of A.W. Leil’s roughly 70-person operation – but as the wind energy sector on Canada’s east coast prepares to kick things into the next gear, Long believes it is time to start writing the next chapter to his company’s purchase of those crawler cranes decades ago.

“If you don’t have it, clients can’t build to suit it,” said Long. “Our ownership believes in us and decided to go along with this investment because of that same foresight that Mr. Leil had back when he purchased that 600-tonne crawler crane. Knowing that we have this crane, developers can now plan and think about projects in a certain way they previously couldn’t.”

Local impact

While their latest crane ensures that A.W. Leil will play a role in whatever comes next for the area’s wind energy sector, it also ensures that any work required on these massive structures after they go up remains not just Canadian, but local.

“It’s one thing to hire a multinational to come in and build your project, but that’s a 20-year lifespan turbine in the air. It’s going to need maintenance, and if the multinational has left, you’ve got nobody,” said Long.

The LG-1750-SX will allow A.W. Leil to perform wind turbine work at a scale not previously seen in the area, but it’s far from a new beginning for the company – rather, the path forward it will help them chart will allow the company to continue to grow alongside the sector and the connections they have cultivated within it over the last several decades.

“Being the first on the block with this machine, we hope this will give us a rolling head start,” said Long. “We have a lot of long-term partners who were there in the early days and are still here now, and that’s where a lot of our confidence comes from: knowing we have great customers and connections, and that they have confidence in us as well.”

The big easy

Following the successful delivery of the crane to the east coast, A.W. Leil held a weeklong training session on the machine for a team of 10 operators ranging from energy sector veterans to a first-year apprentice from the local International Union of Operation Engineers chapter.

“He expected to be sweeping the shop floor and doing other ‘new guy’ type tasks, and now he’s going to be spending the summer alongside this world-class crane,” said Long.

Training involved a Liebherr representative taking the team through the ins and outs of the machine, and will continue in the coming months through ongoing sessions centered around repair and troubleshooting measures.

Long remarked that beyond its massive size, the A.W. Leil team was most impressed with the transportation efficiency of the machine. The crew found the machine’s processes to be much more efficient when it comes to set-up and travel between turbines, he said.

“[Liebherr] took a lot of user-friendliness into account when designing the machine, and the guys were remarking last week about some of the improvements over the 600-tonne that we have now,” said Long. “They’re just finding it easier on their bodies, and they like how it can move itself to the next site partially assembled.”

A.W. Leil’s set-up process for the LG-1750-SX involves two 200-tonne mobile cranes for assembly and installation of the boom and counterweight; a process that takes roughly four to five days. Travel to additional turbines after the first on a wind energy site only requires a partial disassembly, removing counterweights prior to transportation while leaving the outriggers and a portion of the short boom untouched.

Breezing forward

Even with their fleet’s new headliner star, wind still remains just one aspect of A.W. Leil’s heavy lifting jobs across Atlantic Canada: while Long makes it clear that his company is just as committed to turbine assembly as it is to the daily grind of taxi crane work, he highlights that Canada’s renewable energy sector is only set to grow in the coming decades, and with it, the role it plays in A.W. Leil’s contracts.

“I certainly track the Atlantic Canada projects a lot more closely than others – there are, give or take, 500 turbines standing in Atlantic Canada right now, and my tracking sheet shows over 1,200 that are proposed,” Long shared. “It sounds outlandish to even say that number! But, if a third of those happen, we’ll be thrilled.”

A.W. Leil’s positioning on the East Coast may give them a certain home-field advantage when it comes to these projects, but Long clarifies that the renewable energy sector is well on its way to bring big impacts to the crane and heavy lifting industries of provinces across Canada.

“I think it’s sort of the next era for crane requirements,” said Long. “I don’t think we’ll be building many new refineries, or certainly not coal-fired plants in the next while, so I think wind, solar and then eventually hydrogen could be the game changers.”