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The New York Department of Buildings response to this article (June 2016) : Skypicker presented the department with plans for a small, truck-mounted crane... H

by dzdt 10y ago

The New York Department of Buildings response to this article (June 2016) : Skypicker presented the department with plans for a small, truck-mounted crane... However, when we inspected the Skypicker in use at a construction site, we found something significantly different: The crane was attached to a building slab, and appeared to be a hodgepodge of parts from other cranes, mounted on a homemade, untested base. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160623/OPINION/160629905/why-the-city-shut-down-the-skypicker-crane http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160623/OPINION/160629... And the inventor shoots back: The executive director of the [Department of Buildings] Cranes and Derricks Unit when the Skypicker was approved emailed me that [Department of Buildings Commissioner] Chandler confused the Skypicker revocation with a ruling about an entirely different crane... He’s the one that’s misinformed. http://buildingnyc.org/crains-crane-inventor-gives-his-side-of-the-citys-ban-and-backs-it-up/ http://buildingnyc.org/crains-crane-inventor-gives-his-side-...

falcolas 10y ago
An important piece of the story which was missing. Thanks for linking and summarizing.
thekevan 10y ago
True, but remember this is New York City. In the original article, when the crane was first used on jobs and word got around about it being less expensive and required fewer operator man hours, his job sites were picketed by unions. There were anonymous calls to 311 reporting violations but when the inspectors got there, they didn't find anything wrong. In my mind, I'm skeptical and it could have been the cranes or it could have been union influence.
- Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
  It's the unions. On my way to work, I pass by a giant inflatable rat inflated by a gas motor that's hauled around by a truck. It's rather annoying when its tail gets loose and covers the sidewalk, as can happen on windy days when it's not tied down appropriately. It's probably 10 or 12 feet tall, at least, and the tail is maybe 12 feet long or longer. (3 feet is about one meter for those in metric land). It's parked there because one of the buildings under construction here didn't use the right amount of union labor, so there's always a rat present. Walk around and you'll see this same rat in different places; they've got a number of them. They've also got some rather impressive pigs and fat cats. This is the city that couldn't get rid of two operators per train on the L, even though technically they could more or less get by with zero (the trains mostly drive themselves on that line; the operator, to my understanding, just has to keep acknowledging that the train should proceed). Why? The unions protested and won, citing hitherto unknown safety reasons that should be plaguing cities like Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris, Washington D.C., etc. due to their lack of two people. Doubly so for those lines (including the AirTrain to JFK in NYC) that do not have operators at all...
  - ChristianBundy 10y ago
    Here's what Scabby The Rat looks like, for those who are unfamiliar: http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ezequiel-garzon 10y ago
      Thank you! It's late where I live, English is not my native language and I was certain I was misreading all the nouns... but I wasn't! Amazing stuff.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening.
    - unethical_ban 10y ago
      Consider that unions are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.
      - Frondo 10y ago
        I mentally swapped "corporations" out for "unions" in your sentence and it reads just as well. I consider it a credit to the anti-union propagandists that we're all so quick to discard one of the very few tools we laborers have to better our lot in life.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
- pbreit 10y ago
  Why are they now sitting dormant instead of being used elsewhere?
- jaredhansen 10y ago
  Here's a fun story about union influence in NYC (with a little twist I hope you'll indulge[1]): In 2005, I moved into a 19th-floor apartment in lower Manhattan. My girlfriend and I spent about 12 hours at IKEA getting everything needed to furnish the place. By the time we finished taking (2!) taxies back from Jersey with all my stuff, it was about midnight on a Friday night. It took another hour or so to schlep everything up in the elevator - everything, that is, except for a sofa, which we'd tied to the roof of one of the taxis and which was now the last thing between us and sleep. We were just about to load it into the elevator for the last run of the night, but _not so fast!_, said the doorman: that's the passenger elevator, and you aren't allowed to use it for furniture. We pointed out that the sofa, at about 80-100 lbs, weighed quite a bit less than the full elevator cars-worth of stuff we'd already brought up, but he was undeterred. He could lose his job, he explained, because the building's contract with the labor union prohibited use of the passenger elevator for "furniture". OK, I said, not really understanding what that had to do with unions, where's the freight elevator? It's locked, he said, because you aren't allowed to use it. Why not? Because the building maintenance union regs say nobody who isn't in the union can touch that elevator, and require the use of union labor to move anything in or out via that elevator. (At something like $160/hr, iirc.) And since it was a Friday, the sofa would have to sit in the building lobby until 10am on Monday, at which point we could get in touch with the labor union to get the Appropriately Licensed and Bonded Personnel to load the sofa into the freight elevator. (Assuming the members of the sanitation engineers' union hadn't already decided it was trash and carted it away -- and yes, he did warn us about this.) Counting PATH train and taxi rides etc, we're now about 14 hours into the furnishing-my-apartment project. We haven't eaten in about 10 hours, it's the middle of the night, and I am beyond frustrated at this point. I don't want to get arrested though and the guy is clearly not going to give in, so I'm not really sure what to do. I half jokingly ask the guy: well, what about the stairs? Do the union regs prohibit the stairs too? He laughs. No, do whatever you want in the stairs, he says. I look at my gf. She looks at me. _Well? You want to?_, she says. Remember: 19 floors. I think: I can't believe we're going to do this. But we do. ~40 flights of stairs later, we both look like we just climbed out of a lake, and are breathing like horses. And though I'd already had a pretty strong suspicion in this direction, at this point I was certain: I had to marry this girl. I still don't think much of unions, but 11 years and 2 kids later, I'm grateful every day that I ended up with such a strong and capable partner. <3 [1](Sorry for the autobiography but I thought folks might appreciate the story. And it really is on-topic... sortof.)
Animats 10y ago
The base does look a bit iffy.[1] Only a few of the bolt holes have bolts in them. [1] https://youtu.be/5_PjCwMEdSY?t=80 https://youtu.be/5_PjCwMEdSY?t=80
namlem 10y ago
Given that multiple inspectors examined the machines personally and decided it was OK, I'm skeptical of this assessment.

by dzdt 10y ago

falcolas 10y ago

An important piece of the story which was missing. Thanks for linking and summarizing.

thekevan 10y ago

True, but remember this is New York City. In the original article, when the crane was first used on jobs and word got around about it being less expensive and required fewer operator man hours, his job sites were picketed by unions. There were anonymous calls to 311 reporting violations but when the inspectors got there, they didn't find anything wrong. In my mind, I'm skeptical and it could have been the cranes or it could have been union influence.

Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
It's the unions. On my way to work, I pass by a giant inflatable rat inflated by a gas motor that's hauled around by a truck. It's rather annoying when its tail gets loose and covers the sidewalk, as can happen on windy days when it's not tied down appropriately. It's probably 10 or 12 feet tall, at least, and the tail is maybe 12 feet long or longer. (3 feet is about one meter for those in metric land). It's parked there because one of the buildings under construction here didn't use the right amount of union labor, so there's always a rat present. Walk around and you'll see this same rat in different places; they've got a number of them. They've also got some rather impressive pigs and fat cats. This is the city that couldn't get rid of two operators per train on the L, even though technically they could more or less get by with zero (the trains mostly drive themselves on that line; the operator, to my understanding, just has to keep acknowledging that the train should proceed). Why? The unions protested and won, citing hitherto unknown safety reasons that should be plaguing cities like Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris, Washington D.C., etc. due to their lack of two people. Doubly so for those lines (including the AirTrain to JFK in NYC) that do not have operators at all...
- ChristianBundy 10y ago
  Here's what Scabby The Rat looks like, for those who are unfamiliar: http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html http://www.bigskyballoons.com/ratpack.html
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ezequiel-garzon 10y ago
    Thank you! It's late where I live, English is not my native language and I was certain I was misreading all the nouns... but I wasn't! Amazing stuff.
- CPLX 10y ago
  Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument. Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening.
  - unethical_ban 10y ago
    Consider that unions are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.
    - Frondo 10y ago
      I mentally swapped "corporations" out for "unions" in your sentence and it reads just as well. I consider it a credit to the anti-union propagandists that we're all so quick to discard one of the very few tools we laborers have to better our lot in life.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
pbreit 10y ago
Why are they now sitting dormant instead of being used elsewhere?
jaredhansen 10y ago
Here's a fun story about union influence in NYC (with a little twist I hope you'll indulge[1]): In 2005, I moved into a 19th-floor apartment in lower Manhattan. My girlfriend and I spent about 12 hours at IKEA getting everything needed to furnish the place. By the time we finished taking (2!) taxies back from Jersey with all my stuff, it was about midnight on a Friday night. It took another hour or so to schlep everything up in the elevator - everything, that is, except for a sofa, which we'd tied to the roof of one of the taxis and which was now the last thing between us and sleep. We were just about to load it into the elevator for the last run of the night, but _not so fast!_, said the doorman: that's the passenger elevator, and you aren't allowed to use it for furniture. We pointed out that the sofa, at about 80-100 lbs, weighed quite a bit less than the full elevator cars-worth of stuff we'd already brought up, but he was undeterred. He could lose his job, he explained, because the building's contract with the labor union prohibited use of the passenger elevator for "furniture". OK, I said, not really understanding what that had to do with unions, where's the freight elevator? It's locked, he said, because you aren't allowed to use it. Why not? Because the building maintenance union regs say nobody who isn't in the union can touch that elevator, and require the use of union labor to move anything in or out via that elevator. (At something like $160/hr, iirc.) And since it was a Friday, the sofa would have to sit in the building lobby until 10am on Monday, at which point we could get in touch with the labor union to get the Appropriately Licensed and Bonded Personnel to load the sofa into the freight elevator. (Assuming the members of the sanitation engineers' union hadn't already decided it was trash and carted it away -- and yes, he did warn us about this.) Counting PATH train and taxi rides etc, we're now about 14 hours into the furnishing-my-apartment project. We haven't eaten in about 10 hours, it's the middle of the night, and I am beyond frustrated at this point. I don't want to get arrested though and the guy is clearly not going to give in, so I'm not really sure what to do. I half jokingly ask the guy: well, what about the stairs? Do the union regs prohibit the stairs too? He laughs. No, do whatever you want in the stairs, he says. I look at my gf. She looks at me. _Well? You want to?_, she says. Remember: 19 floors. I think: I can't believe we're going to do this. But we do. ~40 flights of stairs later, we both look like we just climbed out of a lake, and are breathing like horses. And though I'd already had a pretty strong suspicion in this direction, at this point I was certain: I had to marry this girl. I still don't think much of unions, but 11 years and 2 kids later, I'm grateful every day that I ended up with such a strong and capable partner. <3 [1](Sorry for the autobiography but I thought folks might appreciate the story. And it really is on-topic... sortof.)

Animats 10y ago

The base does look a bit iffy.[1] Only a few of the bolt holes have bolts in them. [1] https://youtu.be/5_PjCwMEdSY?t=80 https://youtu.be/5_PjCwMEdSY?t=80

namlem 10y ago

Given that multiple inspectors examined the machines personally and decided it was OK, I'm skeptical of this assessment.