Engineered To Lift

Speed Without Compromise: Hitting the Data Center Schedule While Safety Stays the Standard
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Naveen: [00:00:00] So I'm sure you have heard this before. Everybody is talking about data centers, and that's no secret. So every data center going up around in the country, regardless of where you lie in the political spectrum, they're running against two things. They want these data centers up yesterday because every day they get delays, that's real money.

And then given the scale of these data centers and the size of them, that money can be in the hundreds of millions. The safety standard, all the construction companies, they know how much safety is important to them, and then they never budge even an inch. Even though the equipment is, like, extremely safe, it has to meet all of their standards for safety, and we generally applaud them for taking care of their workers enforcing these strict safety standards.

But these safety standards, when they use novel ways of construction, novel materials [00:01:00] that have not been used in this setting, they come at the expense of productivity. That is what the problem we've tried to solve for the customer, building up a data center using a novel method of construction. They were extremely safe in the way they were doing things, but the productivity can be improved by a lot.

That's when our machine came in. Today, we're gonna talk about why investing in specialty equipment, custom-made equipment might be a CapEx you wanna invest in because that will save you money on the OpEx that you have to go.

Welcome to Engineer to Lift, our podcast. This is Eric Niemi, our vice president of engineering. I'm Naveen Binta, president and CEO [00:02:00] of Bailey Cranes. So let's talk about the market force. So the AI build-out, it's no wonder to anybody, it's a power and speed story. How quickly can you put up a data center?

Roughly 100 gigawatts of capacity is projected to be online between 2026 and 2030, and nearly a $3 trillion build-out by 2030. So one thing dominates everything, the speed to power, how quickly you can put these up. That's reshaping the interiors. The materials that were used on the outside, fireproof panels, they're using on the inside to be able to build these up really quickly.

Eric, do you, can you chime in on how these panels were traditionally only used outdoors?

Eric: Yeah. Uh, typically they were a tower crane or a rough terrain crane placement. They would build the frame structure of the building out of their beams or whatever [00:03:00] materials, their concrete.

Naveen: I see.

Eric: And they would place the panels on the outside to contain the entire building.

Yeah.

Naveen: So placing them on the outside, they don't have any space constraints. Any big machine on a construction site would be able to do this.

Eric: Right. That is the, the bulk of the matter, is- Yeah ... uh, how do you continue to build the building with the crane on the outside handling the major structure while finishing out the interior?

Naveen: So if you have to use the same panels on the interior, that's when they run into this constraint.

Eric: Right. How do you lift those when you don't have an overhead? There's no overhead crane inside the building. How do you place the panels?

Naveen: Yeah. So the interior placement is the bottleneck because these data centers have to be using fire-rated panels on the interior.

So you can't put a spider crane, you can't have a large telehandler going through because the space constraints in there. [00:04:00]

Eric: That's correct. Uh, you know, a telehandler that can handle a 20-foot tall panels at, uh, 1,000 pounds a piece, uh, that's gonna be a pretty large telehandler, and then how do you attach or pick up the panel with that telehandler?

Now they're using a- The

Naveen: machine is already so big.

Eric: Right.

Naveen: The foot- it occupies most of the footprint.

Eric: Right.

Naveen: I see.

Eric: So you've got a maneuverability problem, which leads to efficiency and od- obviously productivity

Naveen: Then these machines generally do not have an omni drive or something because they're meant for the rough terrain outside to go over boulders and stuff.

Eric: Right. Or just basically gravel out- exterior terrain.

Naveen: Mm-hmm.

Eric: Or it's not very smooth, it's not flat. They could be on a parking lot, but then they have to build the parking lot before- Of course, yeah ... you can get going. So you have to have a base to put it on to be able to handle the load. When you're building from the inside, you already have the [00:05:00] floor.

We already discussed floor pressures and architecture w- in our last, one of our last episodes, so That's part of our design constraints for the CH4 Omni Lift.

Naveen: Yeah. So I wanna emphasize one- once more for the listeners that this is not a safety gap we are trying to solve. The method that they were using was extremely safe.

Using our machine is also equally, if not more safer. The... It comes to productivity. That safety comes at what cost of the productivity? We can all be very, very, very safe and then not do any work, all sit home. That's not how things work. So we are trying to keep the same level of the safety or improve it a little bit, but be extremely productive while doing it.

Eric: That's correct. Can lift a panel on a, on a panel lifter hanging from a lifting strap from a telehandler, but now you gotta have a bunch of guide people on the floor to position it and get it into position.

Naveen: And

Eric: that's-

Naveen: Regardless of how much you position, the [00:06:00] precision won't be there.

Eric: Correct. It- it, you're hanging on a rope.

Naveen: Yeah,

Eric: yeah. And the laws of physics rule that it's going to move where it's gonna move the center of gravity. You're only gonna be able to push so much.

Naveen: Yeah, and then to control all the swing, and then these panels have to be very precisely placed right next to and then-

Eric: Right ...

Naveen: locked.

Eric: They have to interlock.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: That is the trick, and there's adhesives and, and sealants and all the other fastening methods that have to be taken into account when placing a panel.

Naveen: Yeah. When this is hanging by lifting straps, there's no precision. Precision goes out the R-

Eric: Yeah ... right. It, it's very difficult. You have to have a lot of guide people with guide straps and, and hand-holding and- Yeah

all kinds of human interaction that-

Naveen: Yep ...

Eric: we're trying to reduce

Naveen: when it comes down to- Yeah, there goes all your productivity. Yeah.

Eric: Yeah, your productivity is out the window. Not to mention your budget is up. You've got more people than, that could be working on another portion of the building rather than trying to place the panels.

Naveen: Exactly [00:07:00] right. So where you can't find enough people, your opex is through the roof because you don't have the right equipment.

Eric: Right, and often, uh, getting a trained technician to place the panels can be difficult for any operation.

Naveen: And then sometimes when they see the low, I mean, productivity, folks might not be very interested.

I work a whole day and then just do this little bit of progress. They would rather be doing something that's more fruitful and productive.

Eric: Right. It, it comes down to Your work ethic, really

Naveen: Yeah, yeah

Eric: I wanna do something productive, then I can keep moving and the day goes faster for me. Exactly. Rather than just watching and hand-holding the, the panel into place.

Naveen: Yeah, and then they work all morning. By lunchtime, they place one panel, then what are, what are they-

Eric: Right ...

Naveen: talking about?

Eric: Right. Yeah. That productivity's important.

Naveen: Yep.

Eric: Well, right now, uh, the amount of panels they're able to place with the telehandler is probably [00:08:00] two to two an hour, three an hour. Whereas we're placing panels in 20 minutes or less.

So your productivity goes up by a factor of two. That's, that's huge. That's a 50% increase. That's, that comes down to numbers and, and speed that you can complete the facility.

Naveen: But I think with, with the telehandler they were doing, it also requires more people. With our machine, it only requires, like, two people, somebody spotting and then somebody placing the panel, right?

Eric: Right. The, um, ability for a technician standing near the panel or within eye- eyesight of it, rather than being in, in the side of a cab with a- Yeah ... restricted view is important. I mean, you can get much more precise control over how the panel is moving 'cause you're closer to it. You can actually see it.

Naveen: See it, yeah.

Eric: You could be right up, right up at the gap eyeing it as you're moving the panel into place. That's important. Uh, reduces damage to the panels, reduces [00:09:00] damage to the equipment, and obviously more safer for the operator. He's much more precise. There's less chance of, uh, dropping the panel-

Naveen: Yeah

Eric: when it comes down to it.

Naveen: And then where there's... The way they operate our machine, the CH4 Omni, they operate with a remote control, so their vantage point is much better than just one vantage point sitting in the cab.

Eric: Right.

Naveen: They can stand in the best possible position to see where the panel is being placed and everything.

Right.

Eric: They can watch more of the overhead. Is there piping in the way? Is there control systems? Is there power conduits in the way? Can you get around those? You can precisely fit around those while still moving the panel into place, rather than swinging on a pendulum and- Yeah ... having more people holding spotters and...

Yeah, it's a much better vantage point for the operator, for sure.

Naveen: Can you expand a little bit on the precision that we're talking about? This can crab walk. This can do a 300-degree spin and then pick up the panels right behind you, and [00:10:00] then put it in front of you.

Eric: Yeah.

Naveen: It doesn't need... The way I was looking at it while we were doing testing, it doesn't need repositioning to back and forth to come into the right location.

Eric: Right. You can... Basically, the panels, the wall could be in front of the machine where you're gonna place the panel, and the panels could actually be behind the machine. So you could turn into 360 spin mode, spin the machine around, pick the panel up off the floor, spin back 180 degrees toward the wall, raise up, spin the panel vertical, and then move into placement very precisely.

Say you're, you're perpendicular to the wall or not quite perpendicular to the wall, you can position the, the omni steer wheels to be parallel with the wall, and then move the panel very precisely to the side i- in inches, not, not feet.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: I mean, you can, you can position a couple of inches by very precisely moving the [00:11:00] controls.

The machine has got that capability built into it based on our control system to allow that machine to move in such precise movements.

Naveen: And then the joystick that are on the remotes are proportional, right?

Eric: Yes. And you can control the overall speed of each of the joysticks by a speed control knob on the controls.

Naveen: Oh, wow.

Eric: Okay. So you could be way down into turtle mode and- Push the joystick quite bit and it's almost imperceptible how much the panel moves at a time. You can then turn up your speed control and you can get it dialed in really closely.

Naveen: I see. I see.

Eric: So that you don't damage the panel. Okay. That's what it comes down to.

You want 100% placement every time you pick. Yep. You don't wanna have a, a, "Oh, we bent it."

Naveen: Yeah, approximation- No ... this panel is no good. Throw it away. Let's go with a new panel.

Eric: Right. Or we have to make an adjustment to the panel. It's-

Naveen: Yep ...

Eric: it's, we have to adjust it back into position, so.

Naveen: That's all lost productivity.

Eric: Right.

Naveen: So this, this is a [00:12:00] feature we built for CH4 Omni, the ability to spin 360 degrees. That's only specific to our Omni, right, in our compact handlers?

Eric: That is correct. That is specific to the Omni line, the CH4 that we've already delivered, and the CH10 that is in production.

Naveen: Okay.

Eric: So we've got two machines and we've got a third one that's in development that we can, uh, we've broadened the product line and, uh, can handle different load ranges and different floor loads.

Naveen: Yeah, if you need simple movements, we have CH6, the other things that can do the exact same operations, compact handler, in a very compact form factor. But if you need this Omni steering, our recommendation would be go with the CH4 Omni. If you need a bigger capacity, go with CH10.

Eric: Right.

Naveen: Can we also talk about the crab walk on this?

When you're placing the panels, if you have to move to the next panel, you don't have to reposition where there'd be not a lot of room

Eric: Going back to [00:13:00] how we picked up the panel, you can simply back up to the same stack, spin around 180 degrees, pick the panel, turn back 180 degree toward the wall. Now you can set it into crab mode, and you can move the entire machine sideways along the wall to the next panel placement within a couple feet, which can be really important.

And then you can move position toward the wall, and then turn the wheels parallel to the wall again using the Omni-Steer, and side shift into place.

Naveen: The panels can also be at a 90 degrees. Yep. The wheels can spin, pick up the panel, and then place in front, correct?

Eric: Yep, yep. It doesn't have to be a 180 turn.

It could be 90 degree turn, could be 135 degree turn. It's all up to what you need, where you're placing your panels for picking. Yeah. And the Omni Motion Steering allows you to adapt, that you don't have to constantly keep re- repositioning your pallet of materials. Your panels are always in a, "Oh, I can pick that up from there, [00:14:00] no problem.

I don't have to reposition it with a forklift or a, another telehandler or another handler group of people to start moving panels where you need them." You can just move the machine to get them. That's... It's all about positioning of your materials so that it's efficient. And when you've got a huge telehandler, you're taking up that much more floor space.

Suddenly your ability to place panels where you need them is in direct conflict of where you can pick them up.

Naveen: Then sometimes the floor loading capacity telehandler might be too heavy for the floor that you've built.

Eric: Yeah. That more often than not, especially if you're on a second floor-

Naveen: Yep ...

Eric: yeah, the telehandler, you're not gonna get it up there.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: Whereas you'd be able to place our machine via the o- outside crane and pick it up and put it on the next floor or put it into the freight elevator and get it up to the next floor

Naveen: Yeah, talking about mechanical engineering, leverage is a concept, what, from a very long time. So talking about [00:15:00] Omni and Crab Walk, so why is this not a feature in, like, regular cars where you don't have to, like, spend 18 minutes th- for the guy to parallel park while you're waiting?

Eric: Actually, that has been a, uh, a feature that's been available for many years. I believe in the '40s, Cadillac had the ability to parallel park by pulling up next to the space and then moving the entire car sideways- Sideways. ... up to the curb. Why it's taking so long to get into the construction market, I, I couldn't give you that answer, but even, uh, GM, the new Hummer-

Naveen: Yeah

Eric: that one has the ability to-

Naveen: Oh, it can do

Eric: it? ... to crab steer. Yeah.

Naveen: Oh, I, I didn't know that. Okay.

Eric: Yeah, if you ever see the commercial where suddenly it's, it's driving straight and then suddenly it's driving diagonally.

Naveen: Ah, yeah. You can't- The H2, the new one? Okay ...

Eric: the new H2. You can't-

Naveen: Okay ...

Eric: you can't do that with standard steering in the front or the rear for that matter.

Yeah.

Naveen: But-

Eric: That's a four-wheel steer option ...

Naveen: the origins [00:16:00] of this, we developed this initially working with aerospace and defense, where they need a machine to work on the airplane window just next to the airplane window, where there's, like, multiple planes- Right ... in the space. They, they didn't have a lot of space to maneuver, right?

Eric: Right. That is correct. They've got only so much in between each aircraft or aircraft and manufacturing space. So it, it was important to be able to pick a panel or a window and It quickly move it onto the aircraft without taking up a lot of floor space, and that's where this OmniMotion Drive was developed for.

The ability to spin around and pick up from the production side and spin around and put it right onto the aircraft is huge.

Naveen: Initially, I believe Boeing came to us with this problem, and then we had to design for them, right? That

Eric: is correct. Yeah, that was the originator.

Naveen: So Eric, as, as somebody as a business owner, we're always ROI, ROI is how small businesses operate, return on investment.

I'm sure large [00:17:00] corporations are not exception. So when it comes to specialty equipment, mostly they're, they're concerned about CapEx. So can you give our audience a frame of reference how to think about CapEx versus how much they're gonna save progressively in OpEx, especially putting this machine in there as an example?

Eric: Okay. Let's, let's keep it in simple terms. Uh, say you've got a, the telehandler with a group of five or six guys that are placing these panels currently. Now, the increase in productivity comes where you only need two or three guys with the CH4 Omni versus the telehandler to place the same panels, and you've got more precise controls, you can place them quicker.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: So it all comes down to time. That is the savings. That is the overall return on your CapEx. How quickly can we build this building?

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: How quickly can we build the [00:18:00] next one?

Naveen: Exactly.

Eric: That is what it comes down to. A capital expenditure isn't for that particular job, it is moving forward down to the next job and the next job and the next job.

OpEx, it's specifically to that particular job, how many people, how much time.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: That's where your operation expenditure can, can be very expensive versus a CapEx expenditure. Yes, you have to spend the capital now to get the return in the future, but there's your return on investment is the amount of time and the personnel and how quickly you can get the building built.

Naveen: And then also, as long as it's not the exact right equipment, the OpEx, like, plateaus very, very quickly and then stays high. With purpose-built machine like this, the, uh, CapEx might be higher, but it... the OpEx will come quickly lower. The operator who learns operating these machines and can teach other people, their [00:19:00] productivity can be very, very high.

So the OpEx goes very low, and then it can stay there.

Eric: Right. And then you can roll that up into how quickly can we get to the next job.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: How quickly can we build the next data center? and start rolling out those... You may not reduce the overall personnel count to build that next building, but you can repurpose that work into other operations on the job to speed up the building process.

Naveen: You might be done with building this that much quicker.

Eric: Right, which we all know time is money.

Naveen: Sure.

Eric: And the investors that are- want this data center up and running as quickly as possible, if you can give them that quicker return to get it up and running, suddenly they're A lot happier than taking extra time to continue to be safe with the current operation

Naveen: Yeah.

When it comes to specialty industrial equipment, the conversation is always gonna be [00:20:00] CapEx versus OpEx. So we can help you understand how investing in this CapEx will give you the return in, like, 12 to 14 months you'll be breaking even, and then from then on, the machine will be making you money. Yes, I am saying that.

Spending more on the machine will help you make more money down the line, but that is a conversation we need to look at with a very fine-tooth comb. We're glad to work with finance or procurement on your end to see how investing in this equipment is gonna be a good return on investment down the road.

Eric: Right, yeah. Tell us your operation now. How are you actually going to do it right now? And we'll give you the ro- the path to, uh, help you recover that OpEx.

Naveen: For any of the industry watching, we work with a major construction company. I know there's others, given the amount of activity in the data centers and the AI space.

There's a lot of folks actively looking for ways [00:21:00] to improve productivity, so please reach out to us. If not for this machine, we might be able to build something specifically to support your operations, and then you can be looking at streamlining your operations also.

Eric: Let me state this. Are we telling a safety-first builder to go faster by being less careful?

No, not- No ... absolutely not. No, we're, uh, offering a just as safe or safer method to place the panels with a reduction in the OpEx. So it's, it's not a question of is this safe or not, and we're not moving faster by being less safe. That's, that's out of the question. That's, that's not what we're about. We're always safety first.

Naveen: Safety is always paramount. No matter how quickly you can put these up, if that comes as a reduced safety, we ourselves will not offer the machine. We do the ANSI testing. We do all the calculations. We make sure safety is paramount when we are especially putting folks in the man basket [00:22:00] or somebody will be standing under the load.

That is not a machine that we will put out if it's any way unsafe.

Eric: Is this a niche? I would say that not, not really a niche. Sure. I mean, there's companies out there picking and placing materials every day of the week.

Naveen: Mm-hmm.

Eric: It's just that we're offering a different method.

Naveen: Yeah, the form factor combined with the capacity is, is, is the constraint.

Eric: If the demand is there, the market's gonna fill it.

Naveen: Yep

Eric: That's what we're about. Get you to the end game. Get the data center up and running. We're happy to work with rental companies that if you see a, an advantage to having these in your fleet, please give us a call. Yeah. We're, we're happy to work with you and give you the data to go to the customers and say, "Hey, here's what we offer from a rental market.

It's this machine. It helps with your productivity. You've got a capital expenditure now that you can spread out over time by doing rentals." And we're happy to work in that environment as well.

Naveen: Yeah. For the rental companies [00:23:00] out there, these data centers have been looking for any machines that can support their operations.

They've gone far and wide, and then they reached out to us. If you're somebody angling for that data center business, having new equipment because the current existing equipment might not meet what they're looking for, please talk to us. We'll provide you the right equipment, and then that can put you in much better position to work with these construction companies.

Eric: That's for sure. Happy to help out.

Naveen: So Eric, with the safety, there's no compromise, but we are looking at a lot of reports in the news. Maybe one of our future episodes can be on the safety standards, how regulations are not catching up with the amount of damage that is happening.

Eric: Sure. I would view it more as a, a training issue more than anything.

Uh, who's providing the training? When are they getting certified? When are they getting recertified? Who's providing the training? Where's the product support play into that? [00:24:00]

Naveen: Stay tuned to this space. That'll be one of the future episodes where we'll discuss all these details, and then along the way, we'll help you if you have any questions about safety.

With that, I think we came to the conclusion of this week's podcast. Thank you for tuning in, everybody.

Eric: Thanks everyone. Stay tuned.

Naveen: Stay informed. Stay protected