
Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016) - oftenwrong
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160515/REAL_ESTATE/160519910/dan-mooneys-skypicker-crane-could-save-millions-in-construction-costs-heres-why-its-gathering-dust-in-a-warehouse-in-astoria
======
dzdt
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/160629...](http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160623/OPINION/160629905/why-
the-city-shut-down-the-skypicker-crane)

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-...](http://buildingnyc.org/crains-crane-inventor-gives-his-side-of-the-
citys-ban-and-backs-it-up/)

~~~
thekevan
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
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...

~~~
CPLX
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.

~~~
specialp
I live in NY and have lived here my entire life. I am very pro union but not
pro NYC construction unions. If you have ever been on a job site, there are
arcane rules that pad their pockets. Want to plug in a computer in a finished
room? Sorry you are going to need an electrician for that. If you do it anyway
they will bill you for the electrician coming over anyway.

Need to get in the building? Well the elevator operator that gets paid $40 hr
is off for an hour for lunch. He sits on a cooler and eats and drinks all day
and occasionally there is an elevator operator apprentice with him. These are
elevators that are not construction elevators, but ones that work just fine
automatically once the construction guys are out.

The teamster guys sit at the loading dock on lawn chairs also getting paid
huge rates for doing absolutely nothing. They will not help you unload
anything. They sit there hanging out.

Sounds like a racket? Well it is. And for a really long time it was a racket
with the Mafia enforcing using union labor. If you didn't go union they would
hurt you or somehow sabotage you, and conversely the union would walk off the
job if you didn't take care of the Mafia.

Now the modern racket is with very low level politicians and regulatory
boards. The only way you get in these unions too is by knowing someone.

These people make a bad name for unions, and drive costs way up for anything
in NYC area.

~~~
cup
> you have ever been on a job site, there are arcane rules that pad their
> pockets. Want to plug in a computer in a finished room? Sorry you are going
> to need an electrician for that. If you do it anyway they will bill you for
> the electrician coming over anyway.

If you've ever worked in construction you'd know these "arcane" rules are
there because someone died before they existed. Construction is one of the
most dangerous professions around. Unions are the only thing standing between
companies trying to cut costs and shorten builders life expediencies.

~~~
RHSeeger
"Somebody died once" is not a valid reason for everyone thereafter to have to
pay $80 (an hour of electrician's time) to plug in their computer to the
outlet that comes as part of their trade show booth... or the same to have
someone come vacuum their 10 sq ft piece of carpet before the show opens. Both
of these are things someone could easily do on their own, but aren't allowed
to because someone died once.

------
jakelarkin
This is sort of like how when the waterless urinal was first commercialized,
the plumbers union blocked it from getting approved in the general building
code. Eventually a compromised was reached that involves requiring a plumber
to draw an water line (unutilized) to every water-less install.

Unions for skilled, high-pay jobs in highly regulated industries really
extract a lot of questionable value from society.

~~~
ahoy
Union acts in it's member's interests: "Terrible, we shouldn't allow this".

Corporation acts in it's own interests: "Well you can't blame them for that".

~~~
a_puppy
I tend to think that monopolies are bad, whether corporations or unions. Local
14 is trying to be a monopoly.

One of the best arguments I've heard for unions [0] is that a negotiation
between workers and companies is usually very lopsided: a company can afford
for an employee to quit, but a worker often cannot afford to get fired. A
union is powerful enough to negotiate equally with companies. But in the case
of Local 14, it seems like the power is actually lopsided in the other
direction: Local 14 can afford to boycott one particular construction project,
but the building developers can't afford to go without cranes.

[0] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-
liberta...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-
faq/) (see section 2.5)

~~~
hinkley
> For decades, the local has had control over the training of new crane
> operators—and therefore who can work on a job site.

That's a monopoly practice, right there.

------
Houshalter
The first subway in New York City cost about $100 million per kilometer in
1900 (adjusted for inflation of course). The new subway line being opened this
year cost $2.2 billion per kilometer. This is despite _over a century_ of
improvements in technology.

Here's an interesting HN post, "Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan
Could Not Be Built Today"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11736696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11736696)
In that article is a statistic that three fourths of the square footage of
Manhattan was built between 1900 and 1930. If a freak hurricane somehow
destroyed New York, we would be literally unable to rebuild it. For both cost
and legal reasons.

Someday soon we might be like the later generations of Romans. Living amongst
the great crumbling structures built by our ancestors. Wondering how on Earth
they could have achieved such things.

~~~
mypalmike
A big difference in subway costs is that subways used to be built by closing
roadways and digging from above ("cut and cover"). But now it's almost always
done by very slow, very expensive to operate underground boring machines.

~~~
maxmcd
[http://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new...](http://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2)

NYC subway construction costs exceed costs of similar projects in different
countries, by quite a bit.

------
xienze
> The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14-14B lays out the
> wage floor for its operators at $73.91 per hour. That’s $150,000 a year
> before overtime, plus benefits equal to $32.50 an hour. When the operator is
> behind the controls of a tower crane, he gets a $2-an-hour bump. On
> weekends, when cranes are moved, pay doubles. With overtime, many union
> members earn half a million dollars a year.

And they don't have to take their work home with them! Wow, I'm in the wrong
line of work.

~~~
gech
It'd should be a undocumented person getting paid 6.50 an hour. Looks ripe for
some disruption eh? Send in the VC money and sociopaths! Whatever the market
will bear!

~~~
mypalmike
Perhaps there's a middle ground.

------
karlkatzke
Question: Why didn't the guy just pack up the crane and take it elsewhere? The
issues that make tower cranes unsafe and expensive aren't unique to New York
City, and if Austin, TX was any indication, there has been a shortage of
cranes due to construction activity worldwide.

Is there something about the economics or the licensing that makes this crane
only work in New York City?

~~~
codyzazulak1
That was my thought too, I'm sure there's many cities to market his product.
He needs to get on his GaryVee train and start calling every city until he
finds places to land. Bring it up to Vancouver, most of our downtown is low
rise and would probably make this ideal. And making $400,000 means he could
probably take a year off as well.

------
nkrisc
Unions have a purpose. Suppressing innovation and competition to protect their
gravy train monopoly should not be one of them.

~~~
ThomPete
Not all unions are bad.

Unions serve a purpose in many industries but today a lot of them are
antiquated echoes from the past.

Uber drivers should have a union IMO, but the ATeachers Union and Manhattan
construction industry should have theirs disrupted by something more fitting
for the new reality they have too much power. The construction industry
literally have people holdning signal flags the entire day.

Furthermore when it comes to Manhattan lets not forget how much wiseguys
control many of the cities industries.

~~~
sfall
people are not holding signal flags bc the contractor wants to higher more
people but DOT state or federal require it.

~~~
ThomPete
I wouldn't be surprised that it's because the unions have been fighting for
it.

Other places around the world can figure out to slow traffic down without
having flaggers.

------
rsync
"In April 2014, City Councilman Ben Kallos, who received $2,500 over two
elections from Local 14, introduced new legislation to prohibit climber cranes
like the Skypicker from being classified as mobile cranes. The rule would
treat the Skypicker like a tower crane, requiring it to carry more insurance
and have a Class A operator."

Wow. So, for the price of a laptop I could influence NYC politics and have a
councilman of my very own ?

I don't even live in New York and it's _still_ tempting, if only for the lulz.

Do you think Mr. Kallos would pull me in a rickshaw when I visit ? Or would I
need an extra fifty bucks ?

~~~
vonmoltke
People pay too much attention to the money. He wasn't "bought" with the $2500,
he was "bought" with the guaranteed votes from union members for supporting
it.

~~~
Whitestrake
The monetary incentive aside - on principle, it's a good thing that a group of
people can arrange with a politician to specify the policy they want to see
and then vote for that politician to enact it, right?

------
tmnvix
They do a really good job of painting the union as the culprit here without
any evidence whatsoever. The first comment on the article suggests a competing
crane company was responsible. I think that is just as likely.

Anyhow, as others in this thread have pointed out, the skycranes are back in
business.

------
libdong
> Mooney was told his crane didn’t have to go through the long approval
> process required for newly designed large cranes and that it could be
> approved as a mobile crane.

There has to be some kind of miscommunication going on here. By what
definition is his crane mobile? Because it's easier to disassemble and load on
to a truck than a tower crane? While the DoB's classifications for cranes
seems arbitrary, I can't say I blame them for not considering it mobile.

------
dmix
Too bad they weren't as popular, well known, or well funded as Uber/Lyft to
deal with this type of anti-progress nonsense.

I've been meaning for a long time to start a site to track these events of
businesses getting sidelined over regulatory hurdles - similar to those sites
who track police shootings. Collecting data is the best way to bring light to
prevalent but maligned issues like these. I get the impression there are
hundreds of these small stories that could have had an impact on the
marketplace but get crushed by regulatory/incumbent barriers.

We only ever hear about it when a big company runs into these issues. But for
the most part it's usually people who are already taking a huge financial risk
to do an entrepreneurial activity and they don't have the runway/capital to
deal with the problem, let alone invest the time to draw attention to the
issue in the press or politically.

~~~
RangerScience
This sounds amazing! What's blocking you?

~~~
jessaustin
Oppressive regulations?

------
pkamb
> During the many hours of downtime on job sites, perched hundreds of feet
> above the street, he would pull out a journal and sketch new ideas for
> cranes, hoping to solve some of the machines’ fundamental problems.

Per last week's discussion, who owns those sketches?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921433)

~~~
lwf
Well, he owns the company, so it's moot:

> The 50-year-old crane operator and president of crane leasing company
> Vertikal Solutions was helping to build the 34-story Hilton Garden Inn in
> midtown.

------
tbirrell
tl;dr - It's like a crawler (mobile with a boom, street level crane) but you
put it on top of something already there. Since its on top of something, it's
not a "mobile" crane and couldn't get certified as one, however, it also
didn't fit into the tower crane (tall, lifts things) certification. So it got
stuck in between two classifications and as a result made it too hard for
construction companies to bother including it in their building proposals (the
only way that NYC would allow anyone to use it... maybe).

~~~
cperciva
It could, and did, get approved as a mobile crane.

Then it was unapproved, thanks to political pressure.

~~~
jandrese
Apparently the regulators thought it was mounted on a truck, but when they
went in person to inspect it they discovered that he had built some sort of
jury rigged contraption to move it around instead. This made it fall outside
of their definition of a mobile crane.

The article insinuates that the union was behind it all, but I'm not convinced
he didn't just piss off the regulators in this case.

~~~
djrogers
That version of events turns out to be inaccurate:

\-- Delia Shumway, a professional engineer and the executive director of the
agency’s Cranes and Derricks Unit when the Skypicker was approved, emailed me
that Chandler confused the Skypicker revocation with a ruling about an
entirely different crane.

Shumway wrote, “He’s the one that’s misinformed. The piece of equipment that
he’s referring to was not the Skypicker but IBK’s knockoff of the Skypicker.
That machine was not in compliance. There was never any argument about that.”
\--

[1][http://buildingnyc.org/crains-crane-inventor-gives-his-
side-...](http://buildingnyc.org/crains-crane-inventor-gives-his-side-of-the-
citys-ban-and-backs-it-up/)

~~~
cperciva
That link has the best quote I've seen in ages: "We know that building
construction requires a great deal of fabrication..."

------
schoen
This article is from almost a year ago; any update on what's happened on this
issue since then?

~~~
GFischer
It seems that this might be a new push by their PR firm (which is very good I
guess, the article is very flattering and small-guy vs union side and all the
right buttons)

[http://gothamgr.com/media-coverage/](http://gothamgr.com/media-coverage/)

~~~
schoen
It looks like they subsequently received their certification:

[http://vertikalsolutions.net/products/](http://vertikalsolutions.net/products/)

> NYC SKYPICKER CERTIFICATION

> The SKYPICKER MDS is approved for use by the New York City Department of
> Buildings division of Cranes and Derricks

This article might have been organized by a PR firm, but if so, I guess it's
already been successful.

~~~
djrogers
Good find - the video of the crane 'vertically relocating' itself is pretty
amazing.

~~~
joatmon-snoo
Holy crap, yes, that video should be the center piece here. That's an
absolutely amazing idea.

~~~
schoen
It looks like that feature is also part of what the regulators were concerned
about the safety of (in terms of how firmly it manages to attach to the
building levels).

------
valuearb
This is why it's so important to have government regulation, so that an
interested party can use their political connections to guarantee themselves
monopoly profits.

~~~
floatrock
It can go the other way too. Sometimes interested parties use their political
connections to guarantee themselves, you know, clean air and clean drinking
water.

------
fr0sty
I wonder whether the inventor would have better luck shipping his cranes to
another state where the regulatory barriers would not be so steep. Lots of
mid/high-rise buildings going up in places that are not NYC...

~~~
cylinder
I think the main advantage of this crane is that it is bolted to the building,
therefore falls under the general insurance policy of the development, whereas
tower cranes require a separate policy, which as the article states, are
basically impossible to secure right now in NYC. It's interesting to see this
article now, as I was just reading about the litigation following the crane
collapse at One57 which involved a dispute with the insurer over whether it
should be covered by the general insurance policy.

If your crane can be deemed a part of the structure itself, you save millions
in insurance costs.

Insurance costs for tower cranes are insane in NYC due to the risks - there
were big payouts after a few collapses which killed people. As there are not
that many tower cranes in NYC to begin with, this risk pool is not very large.

------
matthewmcg
"Crain's Cranes of New York"

------
mcguire
Correct me if I'm wrong (the article is now behind a paywall for me), but the
skypicker was fast-track approved under a Bloomberg program, then unapproved
under a new administration, perhaps because it hadn't been tested properly and
was miscategorized.

Given that it is a boom crane, normally mounted on a truck, with a custom
mounting and lifting system (the kind of thing that has peeled off of
buildings before), I'm not seeing the big deal.

[http://www.jomacltd.com/mobile_cranes/telescoping_boom/](http://www.jomacltd.com/mobile_cranes/telescoping_boom/)

------
cyphunk
Unions are great. It's also great the whole world isn't run by unions.
Meaning, I don't understand why a less union friendly city in the US, china,
UAE, anywhere, doesn't pick up his equipment and run with it. After years of
drug testing perhaps other cities like NYC will be ready for human trials.

------
tdburn
This machine seems brilliant.

Those super tower cranes are legit massacre machines. Seeing one of those
cranes go down was disturbing

~~~
eric_h
I definitely feel a bit nervous whenever I walk under one of those on a windy
day on NYC. This article did little to assuage my fears.

------
wilwade
Why is this little construction crane not being used in other cities?

This is what is the oddest piece of the story to me. There are lots of cities
where these buildings are built. Mid-size cities. If the cost of the tower
crane is so much more than this one, then the cost of transport should be
minimal.

------
dade_
He should try peddling it in Toronto. There are over 100 high-rises under
construction in the area.

------
paddy_m
I found a video [https://youtu.be/5_PjCwMEdSY](https://youtu.be/5_PjCwMEdSY).
It looks like the crane elevates itself before a new concrete floor has forms
built and is poured.

------
akeck
Judging from a recent Nova I watched on current advancements in nuclear
technology, he should pack up his cranes and move shop to China. China seems
more willing to try industry changing tech these days.

------
jrochkind1
Why not just hire a "Class A operator" to operate it? It'll still be huge cost
savings, right? And the union will stop stonewalling them, and they can go
into business.

------
zyztem
How operation of this machine is different from pretty standard small derrick
cranes? Like Liebherr DR? Or even spider cranes (Maeda & others)?

~~~
djrogers
The Liebherr you reference is a dismantling crane, so obvious difference in
usage there, and spiders/mini crawler are mobile cranes.

The Skypicker is bolted to the floor of the building, and when the next level
is ready to go in, it hauls itself up to the height of the next floor through
a hole, which is then finished around the crane, which is once again bolted to
the floor. The last 30 seconds of the video on this page show how it
relocates:
[http://vertikalsolutions.net/products/](http://vertikalsolutions.net/products/)

~~~
schoen
I watched that video on that page earlier, but now that I saw your
description, I'm wondering how they get it down again at the end!

------
Jgrubb
I'm sorry, but I steadfastly refuse to complain about the unions. All you NYC
based software developers probably have no idea to what extent the overall
high standard of living in the NE is largely due to so many laborers being
able to make a good living doing something that isn't tech.

------
a_c
Many cities need his cranes. Why not relocating the business?

------
jbigelow76
Dumb admission of the day: the domain name, crainsnewyork.com, combined with a
story about cranes caused a temporary brain short circuit. I thought "holy
shit, this is a really impressive website for NY crane wonks".

~~~
eric_h
Ha! I didn't even register that the domain was not spelled cranesnewyork. I,
too, saw the URL and thought "a story about a crane on a crane blog, I should
be a bit wary of a bias of some sort"

It is, however 1am for me currently and I did not sleep well last night
(beware drinking Armenian homemade vodka (a.k.a. Moonshine made with things
other than corn) with native Armenians, they don't allow empty glasses until
the vodka is gone), so I'm not firing on all cylinders.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Just a side not, I have to admit that I love the nested parens.

~~~
eric_h
Haha, programmer's grammar. I couldn't be bothered to construct the sentence
correctly, nested parens did the job clearly enough.

------
gist
This is interesting. That said for some reason I think that posts like this
stray far from the purpose of a site like this as it is more of a general
interest and not specific to startups or technology.

I wonder if PG's 'anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity'
conflicts with his 'If they'd cover it on TV news' (where I assume TV news is
actually broader than just what would be on TV news and includes items of a
more general audience business interest).

What's the issue exactly? It crowds out and distracts from stories that might
be of more value and relevance than simply something that is interesting.

Maybe a new way to describe would be 'of interest to hackers and relevant to
what they do in a strong way'.

~~~
nwatson
This has everything to do with regulation, certification, union relations,
etc., issues in some ways similar to what an AirBnB, Uber, or other tech
company will deal with when introducing innovations or different business
models.

------
cerved
Does this little crane also construct the paywall ?

------
wodencafe
Just an exposé of Corrupt Bureaucracy.

