12.06.2018

CICA launches CrewSafe

The Crane Industry Council of Australia (CICA), has formally launched its operator training and certification initiative CrewSafe.

The initiative is a collaborative effort with crane owners, equipment manufacturers and trainers both in Australia and overseas, to increase onsite safety by introducing recorded machine specific assessments that confirm and document competency on a specific crane.

The assessment modules are designed reflect the current state of knowledge and best practice and are crane model specific. All operator assessments are filmed, documented and accessible on a CrewSafe app, so that site supervisors and crane operators have a centralised point of reference accessible from their mobile phones.
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An assessment demonstration during the CrewSafe launch

CrewSafe was formally launched in Western Australia with a demonstration event held at the facilities of crane rental company Freo, which gave the attendees a clear understanding of how the standardised assessment modules work and how they can protect their crew, crane and reputation.
For more information on CrewSafe check out www.crewsafe.com.au




Vertikal Comment

The CrewSafe initiative has been in development for some time and has been on test and module development since 2016. The idea is simple in that an assessor – in most cases a crane operator himself – who is very knowledgeable and familiar with a specific crane model will assess another operator on that crane, to confirm and certify that he is fully familiar and competent to operate it. To keep it all straight and true the entire hands-on part of the assessment is filmed and documented, with the video footage and assessment forms uploaded to the CrewSafe data base so that site supervisors or crane owners can - if they have reason – review an operator’s assessment and certification information.

The move creates a clear cut, well documented proof of familiarisation and competency, which will help protect the crane owner, the operator, and the site supervisor in the case of something going wrong.

It is a glimpse of the not so far off future, where training and competency tests are all recorded and available to view. With the advent of VR simulators for example crane or aerial lift operators can be trained and/or evaluated for a type of machine and scenario with the test exercise recorded and logged into the operator’s certification file for checking or verification at a later date.

It will certainly play a major role in tightening up certification and competency checking, where there is really no where for an incompetent or untrained operator to hide.

Welcome to a brave new world.