Lifting

How does Lifting work, step by step?

1. 1

   Step 1: Build a lifting schedule for the whole project

   The most useful thing a project can do about lifting is to list, early, everything that will have to be lifted: the frame, the facade, the plant, the modules, the deliveries and the awkward one-offs that always get forgotten. That schedule is what allows the right machines to be chosen and sequenced, and it exposes the lifts nothing on site can currently reach. Projects that do not do this end up hiring a crane in a hurry to solve a problem that was visible on the drawings twelve months earlier.

2. 2

   Step 2: Appoint the people before the plant

   Lifting is a competence-led activity. A competent appointed person is appointed to plan the operations, with crane supervisors, operators, slingers and signallers identified and their training and authorisation recorded. On a large project this is a structure rather than a name on a form, with clear authority to stop work. Where lifting operations are carried out by subcontractors, the interfaces between their appointed persons and the project's are agreed rather than assumed, because the gaps between organisations are where lifting incidents happen.

3. 3

   Step 3: Match the machine to load, reach, duration and space

   Selection follows from four questions: what the loads are, how far the machine has to reach, how long the lifting goes on for, and how much room there is to stand and to set up. Duration is the one most often underweighted - a machine that is cheap per lift but slow to set up is expensive on a project with a hundred small lifts, and the reverse is true for a project with three big ones. The answer is often more than one machine, and the point of asking the question properly is to find that out before rather than after.

4. 4

   Step 4: Sort the ground and the supporting structure

   Whatever the machine, something carries it. Tower crane bases, mobile crane pads, crawler platforms, mast bases and the floors under a spider crane are all designed by the temporary works designer, checked by the structural engineer where the permanent works are involved, and signed off before the machine arrives. Stand-off from excavations, basements, culverts and services is part of the same design. This is the step whose omission most reliably produces an overturned machine, and it is not a step that can be caught up later.

5. 5

   Step 5: Plan each operation to its complexity

   Routine repetitive lifts are covered by a generic plan; anything unusual, heavy, close to structures or people, involving two machines, or over a road, railway or occupied building is planned individually by the appointed person. The plan covers the machine, the position, the load, the accessories, the people, the sequence, the communications, the exclusion and the conditions under which the lift will stop. It is briefed to everyone taking part rather than filed, and the briefing is the point at which the people doing the work get to say it will not work.

6. 6

   Step 6: Control the accessories and the records

   Slings, chains, shackles, beams, clamps, magnets and vacuum lifters are lifting equipment in their own right. They are marked, registered, stored properly, inspected before use, taken out of service when damaged and thoroughly examined at the required intervals with the records held on site. The informal pile of slings in a container is where this control fails. Bespoke lifting frames and spreader beams are designed, marked and examined equipment too, and are not fabricated on site to suit the day.

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   Step 7: Stop when the plan does not match the day

   The most important control in lifting is the willingness to stop. Wind rises, a load turns out heavier than declared, the ground is softer than expected, the machine cannot be positioned where the plan says, or people cannot be kept out of the area. In each case the operation stops and the appointed person reconsiders, rather than the crew adjusting on the spot. That authority is given explicitly to the crane supervisor and the operator when the operation is briefed, and it is the difference between a project that has near misses and one that has incidents.