In the spring of 1996, the lift maintenance crew at Tremblant, Que., faced a huge challenge: overhauling the sheave assemblies on all 32 towers of an 8,250-feet-long bubble quad. Because this lift ran close to 3,000 hours a year and had reached 20,000 hours of operation, it was due for a major overhaul. But several constraints made the job complicated: time, equipment, tooling and spare parts.
The major time constraint was that the lift had to be in operation by June 15 for summer business. It was April 15, the ski season was over and the clock was ticking. Access to most of the 32 towers was difficult, but with tracked vehicles, the snow still on the ground would make access easier and faster, so it was decided to start immediately. Because management didn’t want to incur overtime and the number of qualified maintenance personnel was limited, tight scheduling was essential to coordinate the various steps required to get the job done on time.
The big stumbling block, however, was to find a mobile machine that could provide access at all sites and reach high enough to manipulate the sheave assemblies—each one could weigh up to 1,000 pounds—safely and efficiently. Paul Lacelle, lift maintenance manager, and Yvan Lebel, lift maintenance supervisor, along with their crews, evaluated several possibilities beginning with a Hyab C18 mounted on a Bombardier B10 with a 40-foot reach. The cost of renting this equipment was prohibitive and its immediate availability was questionable, so this solution was impractical.
They also considered renting a Komatsu 220 excavator that could be used with slings and pulleys to manipulate the sheave trains. This solution would have been okay had it not been for another idea: a Bombardier BR400 mounted with a Braiden winch that was normally used for winter snow grooming. This machine could easily be fitted with slings and pulleys, and the maintenance crew could design and build special hooks to manipulate the sheave trains safely without damaging them. In addition, Tremblant owned the equipment, which made the costs associated with this solution minimal: operator, fuel and maintenance.
Still, to meet the June 15 deadline, the logistics were tricky. The standard practice would be to spend over $45,000 in spare sheave assemblies in order to supply the teams working on the line and keep them busy. But Tremblant had other lifts with sheave assemblies that were identical to those being rebuilt, so these were borrowed as needed. This enabled the crew to move the BR400 into place, remove one sheave assembly and immediately replace it with another. A smaller Bombardier Muskeg transported the assemblies to the maintenance shop and back up the hill when the overhauling was finished. With this combination, transportation and downtime were significantly minimized.
To clean the parts, unskilled seasonal employees—lift loaders, snow-removal workers, etc.—were retained and, using solvent containers that could hold an entire sheave unit, they scrubbed and cleaned them. These teams then passed the assemblies to a group of workers who reassembled and delivered them to the work teams on the line. Coordination was tight because the assemblies being rebuilt had to fit the sequence of assemblies required as the line team made its way up the line. But, using this tight scheduling, travel time was minimized and the speed of the job maintained to meet the deadline.
Most important, the execution of the project was a brilliant example of team play. Ideas came from all the people involved and, because the crews understood how critical it was to meet the deadline, everyone focused on finding faster, more efficient ways of getting the job done.
Although the challenge was extremely high, with the proper resources and employee motivation, the job was finished one week before the deadline date. To celebrate this success, management threw a big party for everyone who worked on the project with an outdoor barbeque, beer and lots of noisey festivities.
