Construction without building permits

An inflatable maintenance facility for heavily regulated site

Customer satisfaction is at the heart of Liebherr’s business model. To safeguard a high level of service, Liebherr often does routine maintenance on their port cranes themselves. LHM-series maritime cranes can bear the load of 60 tonnes and reach up to 60 meters wide, making these cranes critical equipment at any port and requiring efficient maintenance done efficiently.

Liebherr was looking to construct a workshop for upcoming maintenance at the port in Newfoundland, Canada. With wind gusts reaching up to 40 meters per second, and the temperatures dropping to as low as -38 degrees Celsius, they required a resilient facility.

Due to heightened security on the ports, Liebherr was unable to obtain the building permit required to construct such a facility. With Liebherr in need of an alternative, they commissioned Aviatech to manufacture their inflatable workshop. Aviatech hangars do not require building permits, as they need no foundation and therefore are considered temporary facilities.

Aviatech hangars were an excellent alternative for Liebherr, as they are long-lasting, simple to erect and budget-friendly. With the mobile nature of inflatable hangars, Liebherr can easily relocate the facility to any of their future maintenance locations.

While the Aviatech facilities are known for their ease of setup, the supervising team still does a thorough theoretical training and performs the initial setup to ensure smooth erection process. Usually, this takes place at the customer’s operating site location. Due to security restrictions at the Newfoundland port, Aviatech team did not have direct access to the port for this project. Instead of a regular first erection session together with the customer’s crew, Aviatech had to develop a more extensive training session for the Liebherr team and held a practical exercise at an offsite location.

The restrictions at the Newfoundland port are not just limited to non-authorized people on site. They also restrict building permits, which was the initial reason why Liebherr started investigating alternative solutions on how to establish a maintenance center without the requirement of a construction permit.

The Newfoundland port location in the east coast of the North American mainland hosts a subarctic climate which is characterized by extensive, below freezing and snowy winters and extreme temperature variations throughout the year. Due to the weather extremes in this part of the world, the facility had to withstand intense environment changes.

Keywords: no building permit, simple to erect, subarctic climate construction

In just 45 days, Aviatech delivered customized hangar to the Liebherr team. The enormous size of the cranes specified facility 20 meters width and 70 meters length, totaling area at 1400 sqm/sqft. With the port restrictions in front of mind, the hangar was packed into a single 40-foot sea container. The last mile was delivered by a standard cargo truck.

As the extreme weather conditions were a primary factor in the development of Liebherr’s maintenance facility, Aviatech added diesel powered heating system to ensure staff were kept safe and comfortable throughout the project.

The theoretical training, practical exercises, and packing were delivered to Liebherr’s team over the course of seven days.

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Even without access to the port, Aviatech still managed to meet the customer’s expected timeline. The hangar was produced and delivered to the Newfoundland port in 87 days ready to erection.

Aviatech supervisors successfully educated 16 of the Liebherr employees and team erected the hangar on site by themselves.