Rare Bird Calm as Bank Teller While Perched on a Tower Crane

Urban revitalizations of the last two decades have brought some strange birds to perch high above American cities.

Bob Scioletti is one of them.

He is a tower crane operator, a man who maintains the demeanor of a bank teller as he sits in a loft hundreds of feet above the ground and controls tons of steel and the fate of fellow workers with his fingertips.

“It looks a lot harder than it is. It’s very comfortable up there. I like being in air,” he said.

Workers like Scioletti operate some of the biggest single pieces of construction equipment in the world. His 200-ton tower crane can lift up to 60 tons.

Operating it is not for the faint-hearted.

“There’s a lot of technique to it,” Scioletti almost grudgingly conceded during a recent break from building International Place, a steel-and-marble complex in downtown Boston. “When you have what you call a live load, you’re conscious of the fact that these are lives you’re dealing with.”

He says he leaves “the daredevil stuff to the ironworkers,” but their destiny often is in Scioletti’s hands. They must have faith that his attention and skill will not waver.

“You take a plane, you have to trust the pilot, right?” said Bill DiBerto, 39, a foreman and longtime ironworker. “I’ve known operators for 20 years. If they didn’t feel right, they wouldn’t operate the crane.”

Operators must be responsible enough to lift workers hundreds of feet in the air, deft enough to transport steel beams safely around the site and sensitive enough to know when heavy loads are about to tip the crane over.

Scioletti recently has been fitting 19-ton steel columns into 66-hole slots. He must lower the columns a quarter of an inch at a time when contact is about to be made.

The tower crane can work safely in winds up to 30 m.p.h., but the crane operator does not always choose to do so.