The event opened with a brief introduction by outgoing Cranes Today editor Will Dalrymple, who has organised the event for the past three years. The keynote address was delivered by Alex Mullins, general manager of Al Jaber Heavy Lift. Mullins discussed the concept of a ‘safe system of work’, opening his remarks with a desciption of an accident in Qatar last year.

Mullins explained that a mobile crane working at a Qatar gas refinery had tipped over after one of its outriggers had been placed on a manhole cover. The civil foreman working on the job had only been given casual instructions on how the manhole should be backfilled, but had been made accountable for the operation. There was no written documentation correctly identifying or locating the manhole.

The accident, Mullins said, demonstrated how a safe system of work can improve site safety. A safe system of work seeks to document all a site’s operations. The fundamental principles of the system are to plan, to resource, to communicate and to monitor. Mullins argued that by having a single appointed person with ultimate responsibility for a lift, such a system can be more reliably implemented. Choices made when contracting lifting equipment, and in particular the choice between whether to manage the lift yourself or to use a crane rental firm on a fully contracted basis (where they are responsible for planning and risk assessment), can be key to the lift being performed properly.

The local focus of the first session was continued by Hetco’s Wassim Labaki (interviewed for the ‘In Our Fleet’ column, on p82 of this issue), who described how to turn a traditional heavy lift business into an efficient organisation. Building on Hetco’s experiences of more than 60 years working in Kuwait, Labaki looked at the challenges and opportunities the business faces as its management passes from one generation of the Al Hoss family to the next.

Other local business insights came from Ludo Sarens and Hemant Joshi, who described the history of the Sarens Nass joint venutre; Saeed Malik of Al Suwaidi, who examined the state of the lifting market in Saudi Arabia; Ali M Ghamdi of Saudi Aramco, who looked at the efforts his company is making to outsource its lifting operations to local private business; and Ghamdi’s colleague Hosam Hashem, who explained the efforts the company is making to apply the principles of the proposed new US crane and derricks rule in Saudi Arabia.

The first morning session was concluded by Ahmed Khalil Abdul Kareem, senior safety engineer at the Dubai Municipality Buildings Department. Abdul Kareem explained the department’s safety priorities, examined official accident statistics and described the Emirate’s worksite inspection processes.

There are more than 800,000 people working on 8,000 job sites across Dubai. Over the last year, Abdul Kareem said, the municipality has made changes to its approved code of practice and set up a new centre to accredit crane certifiers and inspectors. The lifting industry in the region still faces challenges though. Companies have been found performing erection and dismantling operations for which they are not competent, or working from maintenance checklists that do not match those supplied by the crane manufacturer.

Attendees questioned Abdul Kareem about the resources available to his department, and about some of the details of the municipality’s safety policies. One delegate pointed out that the municipality’s ban on cranes over 25 years should be replaced with a requirement for yearly inspections: a point crane safety experts have made recently in other jurisdictions, such as the UK and New York.

Martin Banasik, of Allianz, drew on his expertise as an insurance engineer and a member of the UK Strategic Forum on construction safety, to look at tower crane safety and the important role of regular inspection. Jean-Louis Olivier of SMIE explained how anti-collision systems could prevent accidents and Guenther Gfrerrer of Teufelberger discussed how to avoid the risks of twist in wire ropes. Ruby Hammerschmidt of Pfeiffer considered the rigging requirements and risk assessment needs of specialised under the hook attachments. CraniMax’s Michael Koelsch (interviewed as part of the lift planning article on p57 of this issue) suggested how lift planning software could improve job safety, and allow contractors to present potential end users with more detailed quotes. Jeff York of SignalRite looked at the difficult issues involved in designing an effective system for verbal communications.

Not all of the insights provided looked at the technological cutting edge, but at better ways to use older ideas. Carl Cooper of Compact Lifting Equipment discussed how small cranes can be used in place of tower cranes on many job sites. By careful ‘leapfrogging’ between floors and making use of the cranes’ pick and carry capacity and ability to be carried between floors in elevators, small cheap cranes can replace more expensive equipment. Cooper spoke to Cranes Today after the event, saying: “A lot of people don’t take into account the sort of mini-cranes that we offer. After speaking at Middle East Cranes, delegates from companies like Saudi Aramco and Kanoo Machinery told me that the industry there can get obsessed with new tower cranes, but they can see how the sort of improvements we offer on established ideas, like pick and carry, can still be useful.

“A lot of the delegates had never thought of using small pick and carry cranes in place of tower cranes. A lot of the time, it helps to get back to basics. Talking to other delegates, we discussed how the capacities of cranes used for standard and heavy lifting have moved upwards: not long ago, 70t was considered a heavy lift, but now people think of 120t as the starting point for heavy lifting. The capacity of cranes used for standard lifts now seems to start at around 40t. There’s a lot of space at lower capacities where people don’t know what’s available.

“When I talked to delegates at Middle East Cranes, they told me that they would use our cranes in their rental fleets. I think people can forget that you can often make more money, pound for pound, by having small cranes in your fleet. Talking at the event was also a good tool for educating end users about our cranes: people saw that if you can use a 3t or 4t crane in place of a larger crane, it makes sense to use the smaller crane and cut your costs. After speaking at Middle East Cranes, I was asked for quotes on potential orders worth more than EUR2m.”

Middle East Cranes also provides an opportunity to understand the development and implementation of the industry’s most advanced standards, directly from the experts who’ve played a part in their creation. Carsten Bohnenkamp, president of the FEM subgroup on tower and harbour cranes and director of tower crane engineering at Manitowoc Potain, discussed the safety improvements made by the European tower crane standard, EN 14439.

Bohnenkamp explained the major changes in the standard, related to out of service wind conditions and access to the crane, and amendments relating to the use of climbing frames. The changes, Bohnenkamp said, seek to improve safety in and out of service conditions; to protect drivers, service technicians and others on the construction site; to make operators more comfortable; and to improve flexibility for crane owners.

During the mobile cranes session, Terex director of product integrity Klaus Meissner looked at the changes to the European standard EN 13000. The standard has sparked a transatlantic rift, as US users object to the restrictions the standard places on access to the crane’s RCL override key. Meissner gave a history of the development of the European standards system, the principles on which it is based and the philosophy underlying the restrictions on the use of the key.

Meissner told Cranes Today, “Terex Cranes is an advocate of cranes safety and has offered additional support to the Crane Safety Forum in Dubai. As a manufacturer’s representative, I appreciate the information on the market as well as the information on regulatory issues provided during the forum.”