The over-riding message of last year’s Crane Safety conference was that most accidents are due to some kind of human error – and so proper training and supervision are key. This year the loudest message was about planning. David Butterworth from the UK Health & Safety Executive, Ainscough Crane Hire boss Martin Ainscough and Mammoet corporate safety director Bryan Cronie all addressed this subject directly, but a wide range of speakers also touched upon this theme. Whether you are planning a lift, planning your maintenance schedule or planning safe working at height, that corny old cliché remains as true as ever: failing to plan is planning to fail.
Crane Safety 2004 was held at London’s Thistle Tower Hotel on 21 and 22 June. The audience of 170, brought together from 17 countries and four continents – was from a diverse background. The lifting contractors and rental companies were best represented – including 28 people from 17 UK specialist lifting contractors, plus representatives from half a dozen overseas lifting companies. Insurance and regulatory bodies from around the world were also strongly represented. Main contractors, client organisations, trade associations and equipment suppliers made up the rest of the gathering.
All speakers were clearly experts in their field: some spoke with authority about the need for improvement in the field of crane safety, some with passion, and some with both. Martin Ainscough and Bryan Cronie fall into the latter category. Both strongly advocated that contractors who bring in lifting contractors should give the crane specialists responsibility for planning the lift. In the UK there is now a special form of contract for this arrangement, published by the Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA). Called ‘a contract lift’, it differs from a straight ‘hire’ in that the company with the crane supplies the appointed person who is legally responsible for ensuring the lift is properly planned and carried out safely. It costs the client a little more, but it places risk and responsibility where it properly belongs – in the hands of the party with the expertise.
Martin Ainscough gave just a brief description of his company – 530 mobile telescopic cranes and more than 1,100 employees at 24 locations throughout the UK – before getting into his stride. ‘Just for a minute, imagine being responsible for a company of this size, and ask yourself whether or not you think safety is a serious issue,’ he said. ‘Ask yourself if you believe, in reality, accidents don’t happen to you – they happen to others. Imagine the phone rings on a Friday night. There has been an accident. A crane has overturned erecting concrete crash barriers on a motorway, and the driver is trapped in the crane. The motorway has been closed off in both directions.
‘You instruct your operations team to get large cranes to site to try and get the driver out and clear the motorway. You go straight to the accident site, where the police have access cordoned off. You have to explain who you are to the police to be allowed access to the closed motorway. You ask the police if there is any news on the crane driver. You are told that the driver is dead but still trapped in the cab. Just imagine how you feel at the moment you hear this.
‘The recovery cranes have already arrived, and you are allowed onto the motorway. It is a scene of total devastation. As well as the crane driver being killed, the crane has hit the back of car and then landed on the back of a minibus with six passengers. Miraculously, they were all unhurt. The motorway is still totally blocked by the overturned crane.
‘Don’t imagine this doesn’t happen- it happened to me.
‘After the police had told the parents their son had been killed in a crane accident, I was the one who had to go and try and explain to the family the circumstances in which their son had been killed.
‘What could cause such a devastating accident? And what did the parents and the HSE (Health & Safety Executive) need to be convinced of? Was the operator trained on that specific crane? Was there a fault on the crane? Was the lift planned and supervised correctly?
‘The operator was trained and competent on this particular crane. The crane did not have any faults affecting its safe use, and had been maintained and tested in accordance with the necessary legislation.
‘Was the job planned and supervised correctly? We were hiring the crane to the customer under standard CPA hire conditions. We do not believe that sufficient planning and supervision was carried out prior to the lifting operation. We believe the crane overturned due to the operator being pressurised into setting up incorrectly, due to a lack of space being provided for the crane in order to keep the motorway open. Sadly, due to this poor planning, a young and highly trained crane operator died in his twenties. Had this work been carried out under CPA contract lift conditions, this young man would probably be alive today.
‘So was this tragic accident just a one-off? Sadly not, because two years later another of our employees was killed while de-rigging a fly jib on a large crane. He, again, was highly trained but made a simple mistake which cost him his life.’
Ainscough has rigorous safety and training management procedures in place. It has a 14-page method statement and risk assessment for complex lifts and a four-page one for basic lifts, plus a safety manual and systems for communicating the safety message to employees regularly. All operators are qualified to the recognised industry standard and all employees has a personal training and development plan. All cranes are tested every four years and thoroughly examined by third party engineers every six months, as is lifting equipment. All cranes are serviced every 500 hours, and a weekly crane check is carried out by the operator. There is constant review and evaluation of all systems and processes, and the company works to a ‘no blame’ safety culture, with a goal of zero accidents/ incidents.
In other words, Ainscough is doing everything it can think of to manage out the risks of accidents, but when responsibility for planning a lift is out of its hands the welfare of its employees is at the mercy of its clients.
And according to Bryan Cronie, clients are the last people who should be given responsibility: ‘May clients have no understanding of lifting operations… Many clients request operations outside safety limits. Many clients dismiss crane operator who do not co-operate, and automatically blame the operator when things go wrong… Many clients change site conditions after lift survey.’ Cronie also said that he knew of crane accidents that went unreported because clients did not want to blemish their safety records.
Earlier, HSE principal specialist inspector David Butterworth had attacked the culture of bullying that exists on many sites. He said: ‘I get the feeling, although it is hard to prove, that a lot of crane operators, though they may be hard men, get them out on a construction site and they get bullied into doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do. I think there is a certain amount of bullying going on. My advice is that if the operator feels that he’s being asked to do something that he’s not happy with most of them have mobile phones these days he should get on the phone to head office.’ Cronie, who has the real experience of working on site that Butterworth lacks, had effectively confirmed Butterworth’s suspicions.
In addition to those speakers using the platform to make important pleas for change within the industry, there were numerous technical sessions. Afternoon sessions were divided into two streams: one related to construction, drawing its audience primarily from readers of this magazine; and one related to electric overhead travelling cranes and industrial/factory environment lifting, drawing its audience primarily from the readership of sister publication Hoist, the international factory crane magazine.
Many of these presentations were on subjects that have already been featured in recent issues of Cranes Today and/or Hoist. Among these was an explanation by Andy Ciupa of Syncrude on its initiative to reduce the risks of falls from height from mobile cranes (CT Jan04, p17), Dirk Benschop of Crane Business on bringing imported used machines into line with European standards (CT Feb04, p16), and David Stocker of TM GE Automation Systems on a crane automation project at an Italian steel mill (Hoist Issue 31, p13).
Other presentations on subjects ranging from wire rope selection, safe use and spooling, data logging, condition monitoring and wireless rated capacity indicators to preventative maintenance, working at height regulations and operator training/management have also either featured in the magazines before or will appear in forthcoming issues
Cranes Safety 2004 was organised by Cranes Today and Hoist, and sponsored by the Certex group, Hitachi-Sumitomo, Liebherr, Manitowoc Crane Group, Sparrow Crane and Terex Cranes.
