Steel Frame Week: How We Erected the Titan Foundry in 8 Days

The Titan Foundry in North Port Sector 7 is a 24,000 sq m heavy industrial building with a clear internal height of 18m to the apex. The client's programme was non-negotiable: the structural steel needed to be erected and plumbed within ten working days to allow the cladding subcontractor to mobilise on schedule. We delivered in eight.

Pre-Erection Planning

The difference between an eight-day and a three-week steel erection is almost entirely in the pre-site preparation. We began fabrication sequencing twelve weeks before the first piece arrived on site. Each beam, column, and purlin was numbered, painted with erection marks, and delivered in reverse sequence — the first piece needed was the last to arrive, loaded at the front of the transport.

Two-Crane Operation

We deployed two 500-tonne lattice boom cranes working from opposite ends of the building footprint simultaneously. Each crane had its own erection crew and its own delivery zone — no shared lifts, no waiting. The structural engineer had pre-approved the erection sequence to ensure stability at every intermediate stage, allowing us to work both ends in parallel without needing temporary bracing between bays.

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Two cranes working towards each other sounds simple. In practice it requires metre-level coordination of every pick, every delivery, and every connection team. Our planning team modelled it in 4D before we touched a piece of steel.

Connection and Plumbing

High-strength friction grip (HSFG) bolted connections were used throughout. This allowed our connection teams to work behind the crane without waiting for welds to cool — a critical time saving on a fast-track programme. Plumbing and alignment was checked by survey after each bay was complete, with any corrections made before the crane moved forward.

• 376 individual steel members erected across 8 working days
• Zero dropped loads or incident reports across the full erection period
• All plumbing tolerances within ±3mm against a specification of ±10mm
• Cladding subcontractor mobilised on Day 9 as programmed