A towering piece of construction equipment recently traveled by barge from Brewer to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, where it will be used to rebuild a World War II-era dry dock.
The bright red, steel structure of the “lifting device,” as the shipyard calls it, is 110 feet tall, 111 feet wide and can hoist 4,000 metric tons.
It was built by Cianbro Corp. at its Modular Manufacturing Facility in Brewer and floated on a specialty barge down the Penobscot River, and along the Maine coast to the shipyard at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, where it arrived on Monday.
The lift is set to be assembled in the coming weeks, concluding in early May, according to the shipyard. The completed device will be used to lift 27 “concrete monoliths,” each weighing 4,000 tons, that are currently being built by Cianbro in Brewer.
“The project will modernize the historic dry dock, originally constructed during WWII. By increasing its capacity, the shipyard will be able to accommodate three Los Angeles or Virginia-class attack submarines for repair, maintenance, and modernization, enabling PNSY to meet the Navy’s requirements for years to come,” the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard wrote on its Facebook page.
The work is being done as part of the Navy’s Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program.
