Two towers.
Cover your half. Share the middle. Beat the schedule.
Your job: get two tower cranes to finish on schedule. Position each crane to cover its half of the building, then assign the middle packages so neither crane holds up the finish.
The two middle packages can go to either crane.
Keep crane centers outside the dashed building boundary.
Each crane erects its farthest packages first, closest last.
What this puzzle makes visible
Total work is only part of the story. How you divide it between resources can determine the finish date—even when their reach is adequate.
A few terms, explained
W and E mean west and east. Each package represents several picks. Its days are the time assigned to that crane—not a single lift’s duration.
Explore the idea in Field Notes
About these crane-planning puzzles
Field Notes explores how steel erection plans connect physical work, time, and resources. These small games turn a few of those decisions into something you can try: move a crane, share the work, or change the erection method and watch what happens.
No crane-planning experience is required. The numbers are invented to make the tradeoffs easy to see. A winning game plan is not a field-ready erection plan.
Real crane planning also requires equipment-specific load charts and configurations, rigging and load-sharing checks, ground conditions, clearances, temporary stability, access, weather, and qualified review. Those checks are outside these games.
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