Safety

Lifting Technologies, headquartered in Missoula, Montana has a nice working relationship with Industrial Training International. They supply crane suspended manbaskets at ITI Training Centers in Woodland, Washington and Memphis, Tennessee while hundreds of project engineers, operators, and riggers utilize them each year in crane and rigging training programs.

A crane operator is in an intensive-care hospital unit after receiving an electric shock, when the boom of his crane contacted overhead power lines in Toronto, Canada yesterday.

The man, said to be in his 30s, sustained second-degree burns to his arms but his injuries are not life-threatening.

The International Sign Association’s successful Mobile Crane Operator Safety Certification Training is now available for direct delivery. ISA member companies and non-members simply need to register a minimum number of employees to participate in the certification training and ISA will bring and conduct the program to any location.

The Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association announces session topics for its Crane & Rigging Workshop, to be held Sept. 21-23, 2011 at the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center, Philadelphia, Pa. For more information, go to the Meetings section at www.scranet.org.

A crane working in Elburg, the Netherlands, dropped an old boat after the web slings broke in a similar manner to the recent accident in Ireland, where the failure of a set of slings dropped a ferry in to water.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour announced Monday its inspectors will conduct a safety blitz this month of construction sites with tower cranes, checking access and fall arrest equipment, plus inspection records and certification of operators.

The company has won two safety awards from the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association (SC&RA). The first was the Crane & Rigging Zero Accident Award. This award is for members that complete the year without a single accident.

Working in construction sites has always been considered as hazardous. In the period between 1997 and 1999, there were 158 accidents which can be considered as crane-related. 73 percent of these crane related accidents involved mobile cranes. Of this number, 10 accidents were caused by electrical contact. This gives people the importance of electrical grounding of mobile cranes.

A young Rough Terrain crane operator died earlier this week in Arizona, when the crane ran-away’ and overturned. The operator,28, was driving the crane, described as a 100 ton Rough Terrain – although it is substantially smaller – down a dirt track in a granite quarry in Congress, to the North West of Phoenix Arizona.

A reader sent us in a good example that occurred this week on a job site at Southmead hospital, Bristol in the UK. While it does not directly involve a crane or work platform the cautionary tale is equally relevant.

A concrete pump was in action on the site and appeared to have been set properly and according to the contractor’s – Carillion – safety requirements.