For the past 10 to 15 years the US crane industry has been making genuine, concerted and collective efforts to address the issue of operator certification in a bid to improve safety.
This drive has been spearheaded, on the employers’ side, by the Specialised Carriers & Rigging Association, which was instrumental in the January 1995 incorporation of the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (CCO).
On 26 February this year those efforts reached a significant milestone with the Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA) and the CCO signing an agreement under which OSHA officially recognises the CCO national crane operator certification programme.
What this means is that when an OSHA compliance safety and health officer comes round your site for a spot check or to investigate an accident, CCO certification is accepted as verification that the crane operator was qualified. That doesn’t automatically get the operator off the hook in the event of an accident, necessarily, but it shows that employer and employee had taken reasonable steps to do the job properly. No other national operator qualification can do this, apparently, for according to the CCO this is the first time that OSHA has recognised a private sector industry group as meeting its requirements for crane operator qualifications.
In parts of the USA crane operators are required by state or city law to have some kind of licence. Training is provided by private sector training organisations or through trades unions like the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). But there is no federal law requiring operators to be licensed. ASME/ANSI B30.5 (1968) requires operators to pass a written or oral exam or prove his/her experience or competence, but historically this has too often been a case of “Can you drive this thing?”, “Yup”, “Okay, go ahead”.
CCO provides a nationally recognised and accepted standard for certification procedures. In this way, it is said, it enables the skills and knowledge of a crane operator to be assessed objectively and independently. But CCO does not itself provide training or run the written or practical exams. This was a key issue in securing OSHA recognition, said OSHA senior safety specialist Anthony Brown.
“The fact that CCO is a credentialing agency and provides no crane operator training enhances the value of its competency assessment,” he said.
Brown added that CCO certification indicated to OSHA compliance officers that operators possessed demonstrated knowledge and ability: “The requirement for CCO certified crane operators on a project will also be an indication of the contractors’ commitment to an effective safety and health programme and will contribute to the project’s qualification for a ‘focused inspection’.” CCO’s authority comes from the breadth of members on its board which includes senior representatives of leading manufacturers, construction contractors and crane rental houses as well as IUOE president Frank Hanley. Hanley said of the OSHA agreement: “This will go down as one of the best things we have ever done in the field of safety.” CCO executive director Graham Brent said: “The net result can only be a reduction in crane deaths, injuries and accidents on construction sites around the country.” That, of course, saves money and thus gives employers a much firmer incentive to co-operate with the programme than just a desire to do “the right thing”.
Since establishing its standards and procedures in 1996, 7,000 crane operators have sat CCO tests at 220 different test administration sites. The tests are psychometricly designed to be objective, validated through peer review, administered on a standardised basis, and maintained under strict security. And they are clearly more than a mere formality; the pass rate in 1998 was 78%, meaning that one in five crane operators, who have presumably been working on site for several years, failed to demonstrate their competence. Brent estimates that there are “several hundred thousand” crane operators in the USA, so there is still a long way to go for the programme.
