Office at 200 feet: inside look at tower crane operating

Raymond "Paul" Lacrouts' workday begins with a cup of coffee from 7-Eleven and a brief chat with co-workers.

The Lehigh Acres resident then grabs his lunchbox and heads up to his office. Way up.

As a tower crane operator at the construction site of the Golisano Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida, Lacrouts may have the best view for miles around. He makes a 20-minute climb up a ladder in a cagelike tube to the cab 208 feet overhead — about the height of a 20-story building.

"I can see High Point Place, into North Fort Myers and all the way down to Bonita" Springs, said Lacrouts, 47. His Monday-Saturday shift generally starts at 6 a.m., though he started at 1 a.m. Thursday because of a concrete delivery.

"I like to get up there and catch my breath," he said. Lacrouts then settles in for the day in the cab. He has a small visual display, his radio, a petite air conditioner and his lunchbox with a sandwich, grapes, snacks and water.

The Golisano Children's Hospital, scheduled to open in 2017, will provide new and expanded pediatric medical services and sub-specialty services to children throughout Southwest Florida.

With its two Peiner tower cranes looming over the construction site at the HealthPark Medical Center complex in south Fort Myers, the project is expected to cost $242 million. Lee Memorial needs at least $100 million in private funds to afford construction.

A native of Memphis, Lacrouts started in construction in 1986, when he was 18. He headed to Southwest Florida 25 years ago for construction work. He got a job as a mason tender for Naples Concrete. That's the person who carries the block or bricks, mixes mortar, stocks supplies.

From there he moved into ironwork, concrete, carpentry. Running a forklift got him hooked on operating machines, and the machines kept getting bigger.

"I sorta got drafted into the crane operating thing," said Lacrouts, who was certified as a tower crane operator in 2000. "I was a flag guy. I flagged the crane operator, telling him where he's at and what he's got to do."

With that role came familiarity with the tower crane, no special requirements. just kind of knowing how the machine works.

"I couldn't sleep for the first three months," Lacrouts chuckled. "I had nightmares about dropping things, and falling. You just get used to it."

A cheerful man with the air of a merry prankster, he doesn't think his job is any big deal.

"It's nice if you can stay calm," said Lacrouts, who wore a safety harness over his Nickleback shirt, jeans, sturdy boots and a hard hat. "It can be a little stressful."

Stress comes from high winds; they hit 45 mph recently but he's faced down 85 mph winds, too. If winds hit dangerous levels while he's in the cab, he'll wait them out rather than battle them on the way down.

Lacrouts keeps a close eye on the weather. Lightning quiets the cranes, which run on electricity.

His to-do list can include unloading steel trucks, flying concrete forms around, moving a variety of things too heavy for human hands. It all needs to be done fluidly, he said.

"Form work is really heavy. Elevator cores are heavy," Lacrouts said. "You're constantly trying to catch up with it. You want to be ahead of the game."

On the Golisano site since November, Lacrouts has worked in Austin and Houston, where he operated a tower crane that loomed 750 feet over the construction. An 18-month job at L'Auberge Casino Hotel in Baton Rouge kept him working seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

He took a week off after that job, then went back to work. It's always out there these days. Construction managers in Tampa and Miami recently contacted him about tower crane jobs.

Joe Jansen, who lives in nearby Lexington Country Club and volunteers at HealthPark, is among the dozens of people who enjoy watching the cranes.

"It takes a special kind of person for that, to be up there solo all day. The guys that do that, they love it and that's great," he said.

In his spare time, Lacrouts — who's married with a son who's 21 and a daughter who's 19 — putters around with his small fishing boat, with plans for more fishing once he retires. Until then, he will keep making that climb every day because it's his job, but it's also fun.

"I just like running the crane."

TOWER CRANE TRIVIA

•The two cranes at the Golisano Children's Hospital construction site are owned by Orlando-based Crane Rental Corp. in Orlando.

•Male tower crane operators number significantly more than their female counterparts, and average earnings in this role come out to $28.62 per hour in the United States.

•Tower crane operators typically claim high levels of job satisfaction.

•The Peiner crane company was founded in Trier, Germany in 1950. It was acquired by Wilmington, N.C.-based Terex Cranes in 1998.

•The Peiner cranes on the children's hospital construction site are known as hammerhead-type tower cranes.

Sources: fantuzzi.com, payscale.com