Lights Replacement on LDS Temple

What was the challenge?

The Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple is a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) located in Center City Philadelphia that was completed in 2016 and towers at 208 feet amidst the 1.6-acre temple complex. The temple’s facility manager urgently needed to replace the lighting around the spire and the rest of the roof three weeks before Christmas and was looking to lift a few hundred pounds of lights and two in-house electricians who would hang the lights.

Earlier, the client hired a crane company and a contractor with a lift who had to close down the whole street to set the lights on the roof and spire. That was half the problem: with crane movements in the wind, the work crew left without completing the required project due to a high risk to their safety and potential damage to the spire. The only other solution at that height would have been scaffolding, which would cost tens of thousands of dollars and take a couple of weeks to install and take down.

The building itself and the adjacent structures presented a challenging access problem: the building between the street and the church steeple was about 60 feet tall, and the distance to the spire's side was another 30 feet. It required up-and-over and side-reach capabilities that no JLG lifts have.