I owned and ran Shimmick Construction Company on the West Coast for 31 years. I was President and CEO for 17 years. We owed and operated many cranes of many sizes. We have seen our share of crane and heavy lifting accidents, some fatal. What I know is crane accidents happen fast and virtually everyone involved with the crew was unaware of what was about to happen. They didn't realize what was going to happened because they had not properly thought through the situation. They had not properly engineered the heavy pic or they did not account for wind, or they failed on maintaining the crane or rigging.
I have seen a boom line snap causing the lattice boom to fall to the ground directly on top of the superintendent of the operation. It was found out that the boom line had been off the sheave for an undetermined amount of time....it wore and eventually snapped. It was a stone column operation which creates a ton of vibration and sometimes results in boom loads dropping to zero instantly causing the boom to bounce. The crew was not thinking about checking the boom line that day.
I have seen a hydraulic crane boom fold in half because the operator assumed how much load was in the 40' container he was lifting....he was wrong by a long shot.
I have seen mobile cranes drop their load and fall over because the outriggers were not on proper footing.
The point is nothing substitutes for proper planning, situational awareness, and proper maintenance....not even experience. The longer the operators and superintendents operator and run lifting situations in construction the better they get, but they must always follow proper protocols. Critical Lifts must always be planned and engineered, no matter how many times they have performed a similar lift in the past with the same crane or similar plan. Every Critical Lift in construction is different in some way, even if its the same pic on the next day; the crane is a day older, your setting up in a different location, the weather may be different, the rigging foreman my be different....planning will help find the differences, focus on crane readiness and help identify any possible hazard that has not been thought of by the team to date.
Always make it mandatory for your teams to create Critical Lift plans when required. Always make sure your seasoned and experienced operators and crews understand that today could be different and if an accident happens its because they failed to think of the hazard that was about to happen.
Experience in crane operation and rigging and critical lifts are key to safe operations, but they are not a substitute to sticking to protocols, proper continued training and proper maintenance. Make sure your teams check all boxes every day on the job before lifting.
