SCIENCE

Heavy Lift I

2015

3 × 45' (ENG, GER)

The story of the engineers and mechanics behind some of the largest lifting and moving equipment in the world.

This series tells the story of how huge objects move. If Archimedes said "Give me a lever and I will move the world", today the answer is usually wheels and hydraulics. Lifting and moving massive machinery or structures is the speciality of a handful of companies and the equipment they use is often tailor made for the job, be they cranes, trailers, flatbeds, barges, and even ship carriers.

We draw on the joint experience, to present a whole new ongoing series of documentaries on the men and machines that move huge things. Heavy Lift tells the story of the engineers and mechanics behind some of the largest lifting and moving equipment in the world, without which some of the most impressive works of human construction simply would not work.

The stories are land and sea based, they cover advanced technology and simple but large engineering subjects, from lifting silos to shifting ships, from contributing to city saving to building alternative energy sources – it is all in a day's work for the Movers and Lifters.

These are stories of men and machine too: teams of men who come together to make something big move, horizontally or vertically. They work together and together succeed or, in some cases fail. They often travel long distances together, and cook, eat, sleep as a community. From the engineers to the crane operators to the truck drivers, they work in unison and know their equipment intimately.

Their machines are the largest, tallest, heaviest and most powerful in the world. Cranes, trucks and trains, skids, strandjacks, these machines are designed to multiply the force of gravity or the power of pulleys.