Safety corner: Construction Cranes
Ron Fouty

We all should be aware of the recent, tragic crane incidents that have been happening around the country. Awareness for us here in Washington really began to take root with the November 16 2006 catastrophic collapse of the tower crane in Bellevue, which resulted in a person being fatally injured in his home. More recently a structural failure resulted in a large mobile crane collapsing in the town of Snoqualmie. While no one was injured at the project site, the failure resulted in millions of dollars worth of damage, as well as lost productivity for the project. Outside of our state, two tower crane collapses in New York, a dropped tower crane section in Florida, and a large crawler crane collapse in Kansas City have resulted in numerous deaths and additional millions of dollars in damage. These incidents all serve as reminders to us of the high potential for disaster if something goes wrong on our projects.

As a result of the Bellevue incident, the Washington State Legislature passed ESHB 2171, to become effective January 1, 2010. Some of the highlights are:

• Crane operators are required to have operating experience up to 2,000 hours according to crane type and capacity determined by the department.
• L&I is required to establish, by rule, a construction crane certification program and a construction crane operator certification program.
• Construction crane inspections would be conducted yearly by private sector inspectors certified by the L&I.
• Construction crane operators are required to obtain a valid crane operator certificate issued by an accredited crane operator testing organization accredited by a national accrediting agency.
• Specific construction crane exceptions are provided for in the bill; manufacturing facilities are not covered with minor exception.
• Crane operators are required to have operating experience up to 2,000 hours according to crane type and capacity determined by the department.

The Department of Labor and Industries has been conducting outreach to the construction industry on how to effectively implement the rule. Many public hearings have been conducted around the state, and they are currently in the process of developing a final product and they expect the final rule to be in place in June of this year. A draft of the operators qualification requirements can be found at:

http://www.lni.wa.gov/Safety/Topics/AtoZ/Cranes/files/OperatorQualificationsExperienceDRAFT.pdf

A draft of the construction crane certification rule can be found at:

http://www.lni.wa.gov/Safety/Topics/AtoZ/Cranes/files/CraneCertificationDRAFT.pdf

As I mentioned, the plan is to implement these rules this month, so these drafts will be very close to the final product. It is hoped that by implementing these rules disasters such as the Bellevue crane collapse and those that have more recently occurred in Kansas City and New York can be averted.