Taking to the skies
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Replacing air handling units might not sound like such an exciting job, unless you use... a helicopter to do the work! And this is exactly what two developers have done in James Bond style recently: Apsys for the 3 Stawy shopping centre in Katowice and Reinhold for its Lipiński Passage office building in Warsaw.
An Mi-8 transport helicopter was used for both escapades – a machine that uses 800 litres of fuel per hour. Piotr Karbowy, the technical director at Apsys Poland, reveals that the Slovakian company the helicopter belongs to – ATE Air Transport Europe – estimated the cost of the helicopter service to be PLN 80,000. This is the price of the two-week stay of the ten-people team and the helicopter itself in Poland. “Our shopping centre in Katowice has a more-or-less square shape, so the arm of a normal crane would not be able to move these air handling units to the middle of the roof. And don’t forget that each load like this weighs two tonnes. The underground car park and the roads around the facility create an additional problem. We could use a special crane that would have to be transported from Belgium carried in seven lorries and would take about two weeks to put together and dismantle. Or we could also have chosen to use a Polish helicopter. However, Warsaw company Wiwent offered us the best price for replacing the air handling units using a Slovakian helicopter,” claims Piotr Karbowy.
The entire operation cost PLN 1 mln – apart from the hire of the helicopter, the total includes the costs of dismantling and the utilisation of the old units, the purchase of new ones, installing them and integrating them via one computer, and the insurance for the whole operation. Moving equipment with a weight of 12 tonnes onto the roof took three hours, but the preparations for it lasted two months. “The pilot was able to place the new units onto the roof with centimetre precision. I expected to feel a shock wave from the roof, but the units were lowered onto it as if onto a sponge. I was impressed,” says Piotr Karbowy. The company is planning two more operations like this – for the Janki shopping centre near Warsaw and for the Platan mall in Zabrze, which the company manages.
A helicopter in the middle of the city
Reinhold carried out its own helicopter mission early in the morning on Saturday, October 23rd. However, the company does not want to discuss the details of the operation, because several days later the owner of the Lipiński Passage building – Union Investment Real Estate – terminated Reinhold’s development and facility management agreement. Because the project is located in the very centre of Warsaw, it needed not only firemen to be on hand – as was the case for the 3 Stawy shopping centre in Katowice – but also the police, city guards, emergency ambulance service and security guards. The helicopter was to transport four air handling elements with a total mass of app. 4 tonnes, which were waiting on the other side of Al. Jerozolimskie, on four ropes. These were moved from the cars onto the roof of the five-storey tenement house and installed on a special steel construction. If an ordinary crane had been used it would require stopping the traffic in the centre of the city for several days.
The operation, which lasted almost exactly 21 minutes, was carried out by Avibex – even though, just as in the case of Wiwent, it does not actually own a helicopter but leases one from the Slovakian Techmont Helicopter Company. “In Poland there is no helicopter which would meet the requirements and have all the necessary certificates for carrying out an operation of this type. Besides, investors and developers do not have complete knowledge of using air cranes, and so such operations are carried out relatively rarely in our country,” explains Wojciech Masewicz, the head of Avibex. To confirm this he demonstrated that the projects involving helicopters in Poland this year could be counted on the fingers of both hands. “However, everything points to the fact that there will be more such operations in the future, especially regarding construction and installation work, shopping centres and high-rise buildings. The solution is easier than using a traditional crane and is often comparable in terms of the price. Not to mention the fact that it is often impossible to transport a crane to a building site located in the mountains,” adds Wojciech Masewicz.
Emil Górecki
An Mi-8 transport helicopter was used for both escapades – a machine that uses 800 litres of fuel per hour. Piotr Karbowy, the technical director at Apsys Poland, reveals that the Slovakian company the helicopter belongs to – ATE Air Transport Europe – estimated the cost of the helicopter service to be PLN 80,000. This is the price of the two-week stay of the ten-people team and the helicopter itself in Poland. “Our shopping centre in Katowice has a more-or-less square shape, so the arm of a normal crane would not be able to move these air handling units to the middle of the roof. And don’t forget that each load like this weighs two tonnes. The underground car park and the roads around the facility create an additional problem. We could use a special crane that would have to be transported from Belgium carried in seven lorries and would take about two weeks to put together and dismantle. Or we could also have chosen to use a Polish helicopter. However, Warsaw company Wiwent offered us the best price for replacing the air handling units using a Slovakian helicopter,” claims Piotr Karbowy.
The entire operation cost PLN 1 mln – apart from the hire of the helicopter, the total includes the costs of dismantling and the utilisation of the old units, the purchase of new ones, installing them and integrating them via one computer, and the insurance for the whole operation. Moving equipment with a weight of 12 tonnes onto the roof took three hours, but the preparations for it lasted two months. “The pilot was able to place the new units onto the roof with centimetre precision. I expected to feel a shock wave from the roof, but the units were lowered onto it as if onto a sponge. I was impressed,” says Piotr Karbowy. The company is planning two more operations like this – for the Janki shopping centre near Warsaw and for the Platan mall in Zabrze, which the company manages.
A helicopter in the middle of the city
Reinhold carried out its own helicopter mission early in the morning on Saturday, October 23rd. However, the company does not want to discuss the details of the operation, because several days later the owner of the Lipiński Passage building – Union Investment Real Estate – terminated Reinhold’s development and facility management agreement. Because the project is located in the very centre of Warsaw, it needed not only firemen to be on hand – as was the case for the 3 Stawy shopping centre in Katowice – but also the police, city guards, emergency ambulance service and security guards. The helicopter was to transport four air handling elements with a total mass of app. 4 tonnes, which were waiting on the other side of Al. Jerozolimskie, on four ropes. These were moved from the cars onto the roof of the five-storey tenement house and installed on a special steel construction. If an ordinary crane had been used it would require stopping the traffic in the centre of the city for several days.
The operation, which lasted almost exactly 21 minutes, was carried out by Avibex – even though, just as in the case of Wiwent, it does not actually own a helicopter but leases one from the Slovakian Techmont Helicopter Company. “In Poland there is no helicopter which would meet the requirements and have all the necessary certificates for carrying out an operation of this type. Besides, investors and developers do not have complete knowledge of using air cranes, and so such operations are carried out relatively rarely in our country,” explains Wojciech Masewicz, the head of Avibex. To confirm this he demonstrated that the projects involving helicopters in Poland this year could be counted on the fingers of both hands. “However, everything points to the fact that there will be more such operations in the future, especially regarding construction and installation work, shopping centres and high-rise buildings. The solution is easier than using a traditional crane and is often comparable in terms of the price. Not to mention the fact that it is often impossible to transport a crane to a building site located in the mountains,” adds Wojciech Masewicz.
Emil Górecki
