For example, the US industry has shown it knows that operators need to be trained properly, and their training needs to be independently verified. The proposed new US cranes and derricks law is expected to come out in a few months, and become law next year. It calls for crane operators to be at least qualified by 2012. In the meantime, they need to be trained and assessed.
At the same time, the Ironworkers Union has revised its rigger training programme; and the crane operator certification body NCCCO is beginning new programmes for riggers and signallers. See pp53–55 for more about these changes.
I think that all of these changes have emerged from a deep cultural shift, that no regulation is no good, and that self-regulation has not done enough.
As a US citizen, I know first hand that we love freedom, and detest government interference. But the changes in the cranes and derricks law were pushed not by the goverment, but by the industry. Since then, the industry has led the development through a collaborative rulemaking process, and waited patiently as its consensus document has been analysed and organised by the federal government.
I admire their initiative, but am terrified by the risks that they must have seen to drive them to take such an extreme step. Perhaps it is merely the fear of litigation, but that is not such a small thing either in the USA.
Either way, the US, the land of the free, is doing it. Now the gauntlet falls to the other huge, and growing, economies of the world to examine safety on their construction sites. It’s your turn, Brazil and India.
