Walk a crane across that? One of the most challenging aspects for many a wind construction project is crane walks across farmers’ fields. Typically, the dark fertile soil is no place to walk a large crawler crane but crane breakdowns are time consuming and expensive especially if you consider matting the route in a routine traditional manner using wood crane mats. The mats tear up, you need a lot of them and moving them is challenging and labor intensive to install and remove. So, Barnhart developed a value add approach designing steel mats that had the required strength, where movable by trackhoe or skid steer and could be used over and over from one project to the next. By modifying the bucket to provide a slot for the mat to be grabbed, the process just required two operated trackhoes to hop mats from behind the crane to in front of the crane, which never slowed down the crane walk process. If the crane was to come up on a soft spot, the mats were rotated from being parallel with the tracks to the perpendicular providing 2X the ground bearing support. Crane expertise is at the core of who Barnhart is and that expertise has proven incredibly valuable as we take on wind industry maintenance, repower and construction challenges. Innovative thought and crane expertise coupled with strong project planning and leadership led to a highly successful project and a delighted customer.