25.06.2004

UK crane hirers criticised at London safety conference

Martin Ainscough, chairman and CEO of Ainscough Crane Hire, has critised UK crane hire companies for their lack of support at a crane safety conference held in London last week after just nine UK firms turned out for the event.

More than 170 crane industry professionals attended this year's Crane Safety conference, including Mr Ainscough, who, urging the HSE to audit crane hirers, said: “UK crane hirers are conspicuous by their absence.”

Mr Ainscough condemned UK crane hire companies for their lack of support in helping to improve crane safety in the industry.

“We work in a very dangerous industry with far too many accidents," he said. "Accidents in the crane industry occur every day.”

During a presentation given at the event, Mr Ainscough focused on particular incidents at Ainscough Crane Hire and highlighted the trauma involved when a fatal accident occurs. Urging crane hirers and contractors to move towards more contract lifting, Mr Ainscough blamed most of the accidents that have occurred within the industry on poor planning.

He also said that because lattice boom extensions on telescopic cranes are not used frequently enough, manufacturers should “make them a thing of the past.”

Mr Ainscough pleaded with delegates from the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to begin auditing crane hire companies.

"You [HSE] may not have the resources to visit every [building] site," he said, "but you could audit all crane company headquarters. I beg the HSE, it is the only way.”

* The Netherlands’ crane industry was also well represented at the conference. During a powerful presentation on lift planning, corporate safety director of Mammoet, Bryan Cronie, said: “Accidents do not happen, they are caused.”

He urged the crane industry to develop harmonised regulations, standards and world wide codes of practice and called for a move towards the high levels of crane operator training and certification already seen in Canada and The Netherlands. “Start today, here and now,” he said.

A presentation given by Dirk Benschop, managing director of Crane Business, The Netherlands-based importer, trader and re-renter of crawler cranes, detailed how the company had obtained CE certification for grey market imports and at the same time had made improvements to the overall safety of the cranes.

He challenged the notion that only crane manufacturers could import cranes under the CE marking rules and won agreement from the experts in attendance that his interpretation was in fact correct.

A scheduled debate on the relative merits of self erecting tower cranes versus those of telehandlers never really came to much due to late substitution of the speaker representing tower cranes.

The replacement was faced with a well-documented and detailed set of arguments in favour of telehandlers presented by Peter Grant of Merlo, who was clearly on top of his subject.

A great deal of attention at this year’s conference was given to falls from height, particularly with the new European directive on temporary work at height coming in to force this year. Canadian producer, Unique Concepts, showed off a number of products that it is developing for use when working on cranes, including ladder platforms and harness posts.

Andy Cuipa, senior loss adjuster at Canadian oil company Syncrude, shared his company’s zero tolerance programme for risks when working at height, rigging and climbing on cranes.

Some informative and thought provoking information on the data logging of cranes and how it can help reduce accidents and trace the causes when they do occur was presented by Klaus Meissner, research and development director at Terex-Demag,. Calling for EU wide clarification and rules, Mr Meissner highlighted the potential challenges when faced with access to, and the ownership of the data produced by data logging systems.

Equally thought provoking was Paul Friedman, president of Simlog of Canada, who discussed the use of crane simulators for weeding-out crane operator candidates who have no natural aptitude.

Finally, a number of speakers were critical of the double standards demonstrated by many contractors who demand maximum certification and paperwork from crane hire companies before the equipment is delivered, only to then allow and/or demand all manner of shortcuts and dangerous practices.


Vertikal Comment:

The coming together of so many crane experts to discuss crane safety was encouraging to say the least. A few presentations, however, seemed more like advertisements for the speakers’ employer than anything to do with safety. The quality of speakers varied widely, but there were many extremely good, thought provoking talks containing huge amounts of high quality material.

In order to maintain the growth seen at this year’s conference, the organisers will need to build on this year’s presentations and not just repeat this years material, and try to improve the consistency of speakers and content quite a challenge! An alternative location, might also be an idea.

Finally, Julie Rossiter, Phil Bishop, Mike Posner and James Snowdon from the event’s organisers, Wilmington, should be congratulated for the effort that went into making this year’s event a success.

Vertikal.net agrees with Martin Ainscough, however, that the support from the UK crane hire industry was a huge disappointment.