It has become a recurring theme of Cranes Today’s annual safety conferences that cranes do not cause accidents. People cause accidents, and often not because of anything they do wrong but because of something they have not done at all, probably because of an absence of thinking ahead. This year’s Crane Safety conference, held in London on 22 and 23 June, re-emphasised this point and moved it forward.

After 25 years in the industry I have yet to experience an accident where the crane was at fault,” said Søren Jansen, who for the past 11 years has been managing director of Denmark largest mobile crane rental company, BMS. He was previously a senior manager with a leading crane manufacturer, working in Europe and the USA.

Jansen said that more than 90% of accidents occur on routine jobs. After all, complex jobs tend to be planned; It is on the jobs we think are so simple that they need no planning that problems occur.

Jansen said there were three primary causes of accidents:

•improper crane set up;

•disabling of safety systems;

•improper rigging practices or kit.

Outrigging essential

Jansen said that, when setting up mobile cranes, BMS demands that supporting plates for outriggers are used for every lift in every circumstance, even for knuckle boom loader cranes. He prompted some discussion when he explained that in Denmark, once the lift begins, the crane operating company becomes liable for ground conditions. Many crane hire executives present found that prospect rather alarming, given that they cannot be expected to have the geotechnical engineering expertise to assess the risks adequately. Mammoet safety manager Gino Koster said that crane companies are not able to verify ground conditions. “We tell the customer what the ground bearing pressure will be,” Koster said.

However, in Denmark, it seems, putting more onus on the crane company encourages a greater presumption that the ground is likely to be inadequate, and so thorough cribbing and matting is essential. “When cranes tip over, I believe that in nine out of ten times it is because of ground conditions and inadequate preparation,” Jansen said. BMS also operates a large fleet of mobile elevating work platforms, and Jansen said the same statistic applies to MEWPs with outriggers.

Disabling safety systems

The second main cause of accidents – where the operator disables the safety system – generally happens for one (or more) of three reasons: the crane is too small; the load is heavier than the customer indicated; or the operator set up too far away.

“As soon as you turn the safety system off,” Jansen said, “responsibility for the mistake passes from the customer to the crane owner/operator.” As a safety measure, BMS now routinely adds 25% to whatever the customer says is the weight of the load.

With experience showing that operator error was a significant factor in crane accidents, there were some in the audience who felt that the burden of legal liability should fall a little heavier on the individual operator and less on the bosses in the boardroom.

Colin Wood, chief executive of the Construction Plant-hire Association, which represents UK rental companies, has spent roughly thirty years in the crane hire industry. Wood said he fully accepts the duty on employers to provide employees with full training and the right equipment, but believes that the employer should not be held responsible when the operator contravenes company policy or instructions. “We shouldn’t beat up crane owners and managing directors,” Wood said. “We should focus more on the individuals who, by their negligence, are causing most of the accidents.”

Other speakers during the course of the two days made the point, in various ways, that countries all over the world have adopted a systematic and rigorous approach to inspecting, maintaining and testing cranes to ensure they remain fit for purpose. To almost the same extent, crane operator training and certification programmes are becoming increasingly the norm.

Both of these factors have contributed significantly to safety improvements and a reduction in accidents. Where progress does not seem to have been made, however, is in rigging.

Rigging vital

”Proper rigging is as important as proper use of the crane,” Jansen said. “Riggers should have to be certified.” He complained that part of the problem was that, with the exception of Japan, too little crane accident data is collected. “This is a pity because it could be useful. Owners of mobile cranes need this information.”

Noting that “A mistake becomes stupidity when it is repeated,” Jansen urged crane owners to step forward and share accident data through their trade associations, so that they can learn from each other’s mistakes and avoid repeating them.

There were enough statistics supplied by other speakers, however, to bear out what Jansen knows from experience to be true. Faulty rigging is a significant killer. The most dramatic evidence of this was presented by Derrick Bailes, chief executive of the UK’s Lifting Equipment Engineers Association.

He showed CCTV footage of heavy concrete cladding elements being unloaded from a truck on a busy street by the vehicle’s loader crane. Just as the crane lifted the load to a height where it was out of shot, the slab came crashing down to the street – amazingly failing to hit or injure anyone. The cause, of course, was inappropriate slinging.

Bailes had a catalogue of photographs showing similar examples, but the moving footage had the greatest impact. He concluded that most accidents are caused by the way the equipment is used, the use of wrong equipment or the condition of the equipment. The only solution is training.

Even the best planned lifts can lead to accidents, Bailes said, if there is a change of circumstances, such as the load turning out to be heavier than anticipated. It is not enough just to have a plan, he said. Systems need to be in place to constantly monitor the plan and adjust it if necessary.

Tsutomu Hashimoto, director of the Japan Crane Association and general manager of the development and technology division of hoist and EOT crane producer Kito, offered some statistics from Japan. In 2004 there were 1,620 recorded workplace fatalities. Of these, 105 (or 6.5%) involved cranes, mostly in the construction industry. Of these 105 crane-related fatalities, 59 (or 56%) were killed by a suspended load falling.

It seems that Japan is not unusual in this regard. Another speaker was Lion Verhagen, who is not only the director of the Dutch crane hire association VVT and secretary general of the European crane and heavy transport association ESTA, but is also a member of the expert college of the TCVT, which is the supervision trust for vertical transport in the Netherlands. Verhagen explained the leading role of the TCVT is establishing the regulatory framework for the crane industry in the Netherlands.

Verhagen quoted a study carried out in May 2005 on behalf of TCVT by Paul Swuste, an associate professor of the Safety Science Group of the Delft University of Technology. Swuste studied 724 crane-related accidents over a six-year period and found that 47% of the accidents were attributable to instability of the load caused by rigging errors or failures.

It is worth noting that Japan and the Netherlands are among the most regulated countries in the world when it comes to cranes. Yet even here, rigging remains at the bottom of the lifting world’s food chain. Clearly, the speakers agreed, it is time to give it the focus it deserves.

Jansen said that mandatory certification of riggers is now on the agenda in Denmark, “but it has taken us six years to get there”.

In the Netherlands, said Verhagen, the TCVT is producing a certification scheme for riggers. Although it will be voluntary, it seems unlikely that the Dutch crane industry would fail to embrace it.

A global solution

For Mammoet safety director Bryan Cronie, crane safety is a global problem requiring a global solution. He saw the problem stemming from different countries having different regimes for testing cranes. Operator training courses last just two days in Thailand, five days in Germany and ten days in the UK, Russia and Australia. In the USA there is a voluntary certification scheme that industry has largely embraced, but no specified duration of the training course required before testing is conducted. In the Netherlands operators are required to have 30 days of training to qualify, while in Canada there is an apprenticeship scheme.

When it comes to lifting gear, the picture is even more varied. The USA and South Africa require lifting gear to be tested every 12 months, Cronie said, and in Singapore it must be tested every 24 months. In most other countries there appears to be little or no requirement to test lifting gear.

There are widespread requirements to inspect lifting gear but these vary greatly too. Inspection periods range from three months (Thailand, South Africa) to six months (Australia, Russia, Germany, Canada, Venezuela, Dubai) to 12 months in Singapore and 48 months in the Netherlands.

There also appears to be significant variance around the world about how much training is required before someone is judged to be competent to carry out rigging on site. In Germany, South Africa and Russia, rigging courses last just one or two days. In Singapore, UK, Dubai and the Netherlands they last three days, Venezuela four days and Australia five days.

“Each country has its own regulations,” Cronie said. In most countries the regulations are applied, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and diligence, but in some countries the regulations are simply ignored, he said.

There is even variance in regulations within countries. “The USA varies from state to state,” Cronie pointed out. The European Union had failed to produce any real harmonisation either, he said, since even where there were relevant European directives (for example, on working at height) they were implemented differently in each country. “There are not two countries in Europe doing the same thing. The EU hasn’t worked,” he asserted.

Geoffrey Marsh, owner and chairman of south of England rental company Marsh Plant, pointed out later that even within the UK, where this is a single set of regulations, there was no consistency or uniformity of opinion within the government’s Health & Safety Executive over how to interpret them.

What is required, Cronie argued, is a global harmonisation of safety standards. There may be many crane owners and operators who disagree. Global standards may be an issue for Mammoet, but most crane companies operate on a local or regional basis and do not even cover the whole of their home country, never mind working in foreign countries. Most companies are not Mammoet, travelling all over the world to carry out projects. Cronie will have a hard job persuading Australia that it needs to reduce the duration of its rigging courses, or persuading Germany to increase its.

However, although the crane rental and operating industry is not a global one, its workers are. While crane companies may not travel much, the labour force does. For this reason Colin Wood is promoting the issue of mutual recognition of equipment operator and rigging qualifications within the newly formed European Rental Association, of which he is a vice president.

A further step may also be required, however. Both Søren Jansen and Bryan Cronie raised the issue of unqualified riggers being supplied by the customer and therefore outside the control of the party responsible for carrying out the lifting operation. “Crane owners shouldn’t accept uncertified riggers provided by the customer,” Jansen said.

On sites across the world today there are likely to be riggers who have never worked with the crane operator before, who maybe do not even speak the same language. Is it time for rigging to become an integral part of the crane rental function?