Israel’s leading contractors have agreed on the need for a crane safety initiative and legislation to impose standards at a 20 March congress called to address the unacceptable accident rate in the country.
The meeting, held in Engineer Hall-Center in Tel Aviv, was convened by crane safety consultant Felix Engineering and attended by senior officials of the Ministry of Labour and engineering organisations. According to Felix Weinstein, principle of Felix Engineering, there were 152 director-level participants, representing all of Israel’s major contractors.
Felix Weinstein gave a one hour presentation of tower cranes accidents in Israel of the last 10 years. His presentation included a video film of a tower crane collapsing because of a stability problem.
The audience was also addressed first by Peter Magnus, the chief inspector of the ministry of labour and the manager of the Israeli engineering chamber.
The meeting agreed that an accident prevention programme should now be devised, and legislation brought forward to impose safety standards.
According to Weinstein there have been ‘many’ crane accidents in Israel over the past 10 years. Already this year a tower crane and two mobile cranes have fallen during disassembly of the tower crane.
