The year gone by, and to come

In this issue, I've looked in detail at the challenging, and changing, lifting market in New York City. It's a market that demands fast, high capacity, tower cranes able to work in tight envelopes. Traditionally, diesel luffers have dominated, but now, some new electric luffers are beginning to enter the market. I spoke to crane owners and users, as well as regulators, manufacturers, and professional engineers, about why this is happening.

Through the year, our features editor Daniel Searle, has contributed strong features from around the world. Just weeks after joining us, we sent him off to Dubai, to report on the market in the GCC. There, he found a cautious recovery, in a market that had been burnt by the highs and lows of the construction sector.

Over the summer, Daniel visited another market that was badly hit in the global financial crisis, Spain, and saw how manufacturers are working to build up their businesses again. Most recently, we sent him off to China, which is now going through its own period of slower growth.

Daniel's been a boon to Cranes Today's features this year. Sadly, for Cranes Today, he's moving on, to a new role in the company. He'll be heading up editorial on a new general construction product, launching in the New Year.

I'm sure he'd welcome any ideas for projects and themes his new team should be covering. You'll still be able to reach him by emailing daniel.searle@worldmarketintelligence.com. As well as our international market reports, all largely based on face-to-face interviews with crane owners, manufacturers, and dealers, we've had some strong features on standards and regulations. We've been following closely the major inspection programme in Australia.

I've welcomed CICA's explanation of how they are helping the industry there respond to this onerous requirement. We look at crane inspection, taking Australia as an example, again this issue, in Fleet File.

I also enjoyed working with Gerhard Wagner, of ISO, this year, on a piece on classification of ropes. It was a complex piece for me, as a journalist, to get my head around, but I think we helped explain the important issues at stake. In 2016, we'll be visiting Bauma, and continuing to go out to meet the industry worldwide. I'll look forward to introducing our new team of feature writers.

I'm also keen to continue with the sort of in depth, technical, pieces like the rope piece with Wagner, or our ongoing coverage of emissions regulations. As ever, if there's a topic you feel we should cover, or an argument you want to make in the magazine, let me know.

Will North editor
wnorth@cranestodaymagazine.com