Today was a big day, and began early. By dawn's early light...

Our new UPS gear has been taking up some of our parking spaces in the secured garage downstairs. In order to get in up to and through the roof we had to get it out of the garage, then up the hillside to the west side of the building where the crane could pick them up and bring them up to the new access door in the roof. The plan sounds easy enough but the devil is in the details as they say. The garage has rather low clearance so it took a pair of forklifts to get the equipment staged, one small one for the garage work, then another larger, more powerful one for the climb up the hill.

Above: Facilities Manager (and certified forklift operator/instructor) Kevin Teker drives a battery cabinet out of the parking garage.

Above: The units staged outside the garage, ready for their trip up the hill...

Meanwhile, up on the roof...

...the access door cap is removed and put away. While down in the parking lot we prepped the space for the crane. By the way, the view of Mt. Rainier from the roof at dawn is quite nice...

The crane arrived right on schedule and set up in the prepared spot. It was an impressive sight when fully extended.

It took quite a while to get the rigging setup just right. The crane operator and rigger did some test rigs, and then "flew" a battery cabinet an inch or two off the ground. It was subjected to shaking and stress to test the rigging. If it falls an inch or two, the damage and safety risk is minimized, but the operator and rigger can test the integrity of the setup. As the crane operator said, "If it flies an inch fine, it will fly the whole way fine, but if it fails at only an inch it is unlikely to kill somebody." Fair enough. We picked a battery cabinet for the first item to "fly" as we have two of those and if we lost one, we could still operate. Rigging tested and the professionals confident, the moment of truth arrived.

Above: First Flight. The battery cabinet goes first. Here it clears the roof and is about to swing in towards the access door.

Above: The first item to pass through our new UPS Room access, a battery cabinet.