Alan Barnhart knew that it would have been, in his own words, "absolutely catastrophic" if his crews damaged even one part of the world's largest working tunnel-boring machine, a 7,000-ton, 57.5-ft-dia drill nicknamed Bertha, which was designed to bore out the new Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle.
The firm, Memphis-based Barnhart Crane & Rigging, was charged with transporting the TBM's 41 individual pieces—the largest weighing 850 tons—from a freighter docked at the Port of Seattle, 500 yards across port property and then 80 ft into the launch pit, where Bertha was assembled.