The community has spoken: the two cranes building the Canberra Hospital extension have been named. Fortunately, neither has been named ‘Craney McCraneface’, as some dreaded, but it’s close: ‘Lightning McCrane’ (a definite improvement!) and ‘Cranosaurus’.
Those names were invented by Emilie (Year 5) and Aubie (Kindergarten), students at Garran Primary School, next to the hospital.
Children at the school came up with a shortlist of 10 suggestions, which were published on the YourSay website so the public could vote on them.
Other suggestions included Crane Surgeon, Craneberra Hospital, CareCrane, Captain Crane, and Lifting Warrior.
Rachel Stephen-Smith, ACT Minister for Health, and Yvette Berry, ACT Minister for Education and Youth Affairs, announced the winners at the school this morning, and presented winners and runners-up with a Lego kit – for a crane, naturally.
The first electric tower crane began constructing the Critical Services Building, the biggest part of the hospital expansion, in March.
“Since we’ve launched the ‘name the crane’ competition back in March, the Canberra Hospital expansion has continued at a really rapid pace,” Ms Stephen-Smith told the children.
“You will have seen the second crane assembled; the basement dug; and now, the super structure itself is beginning to rise out of the ground. It will reach up to eight stories by the end of the year.
“After one year of construction, we’re about to also finalize our prototype shed over at the old CIT campus a few blocks away from here. The prototype shed gives us an opportunity to test out the types of rooms and the types of spaces that will eventually be built into the new building.
“So it means our doctors and our nurses, our Allied health professionals and our support staff can have a look at and test the equipment to ensure that everything is the right stuff in the right place before we start building it into the real thing over there, so we know that we’re building the right thing.
“It’s the biggest health building, the biggest investment in health care that we’ve had since we became a self-governing territory more than 30 years ago – so it was a huge project for us.”
Ms Stephen-Smith hoped the children’s “front row seat” would inspire them to think about careers in healthcare or construction, and perhaps even one day to become doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, or construction workers themselves.
“There are great opportunities to learn; you are a really integral part of this project, and naming the crane is a very important part of that.”
