Safe Lifting

Greg Whitaker , June 25th, 2009

New training and technology are making the region's cranes safer, but is there more to do?

No-one can agree what the world's percentage of cranes currently employed in the Emirates is. Some say the total is as high as thirty per-cent, others (including us) think it much more likely to be nearer three per-cent. Whatever it may actually be, the one thing we can all agree on is that there are certainly a lot of lifting machines in the country, with numbers in the tens of thousands, and probably more if you included the number of mobile, tracked, hydraulic and gantry cranes in with towers, masts and climbers. On top of this, there are the thousands of elevated work platforms - of both boom and scissor type - to take into consideration.

Then there are the cranes working through the rest of the GCC. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has a large number of the devices working throughout the many and various oil operations, as well as in the construction sector.

Perhaps, then, it is little wonder that a few people fall off the structures occasionally. Wail Manifalouti, general manager of Dubai-based House of Equipment (speaking to us earlier in the year) thinks that this is not so. “I think it is a catastrophe that so many companies don’t invest in training. They are too busy racing against time to save penalties and they are more interested in taking a bigger volume of work; sometimes bigger than their delivery capacity. Some contractors are paying attention to safety, but the majority don’t.”

“Without safety and continuous training in the industry you cannot deliver something professional. If those two factors are missed, it is only the blessing of God that prevents accidents happening.”

Elias McGrath, secretary of industry watchdog Build Safe UAE agreed; “Questioning the competency of operators and the training that they are going through to ensure that they are up to date with the right standards of practice is key. We keep stressing how simple it is to prevent damage to the machinery and an accident.

"Are the risk assessments being done, are the tool box talks being carried out? These things don’t cost you any money  - if the site manager has a checklist and issues are properly carried out, then matters can progress smoothly.

"It all starts with management. They need to sort out the right budgets for the training, and it all comes down to the right supervisors managing.”



Modern

So the impression that safety standards need to be modernised and improved is clear, but can this be attributed just to the operators and site managers, or are the machines themselves playing a part?

“You need to have the right men to service equipment Accidents could happen while you are servicing or as a consequence of bad servicing," remarked Manfalouti.

"If the equipment is not serviced correctly, on the operations side you could expect an accident at any moment. Unfortunately with the lack of regulations to prevent accidents at a municipality level, the chance of accidents is high.”

This is a point noted by Mr. Terry, a former tower crane operator and the webmaster of safety site liftingworld.co.uk, who believes that the age of the crane is a large factor in the amount of time it will last. “There is only a shelf life for these cranes," he pointed out.

"The reason being that welds on cranes are only designed to last the length of time that structure was designed for. After that the crane is finished. If it is maintained in tip-top condition, it will last longer than it should do. But we all know what life most of these cranes lead. The crane is flogged to death on some sites, and how can you check a crane when it is up in the air?”

Terry’s experience is with cranes in Europe, but he witnessed first-hand a collapse in Dubai, ironically when attending a crane safety conference on Sheikh Zayed Road early last year. “I was right in the thick of an investigation involving inferior metals in cranes, [when the collapse occurred outside the venue] and I thought ‘there goes another one…”

The age of cranes is of perennial interest in the region. When there was a shortage of equipment, the price of secondhand machines rose dramatically, particularly with regard to all-terrain mobile cranes, and as a result all kinds of obscure and ancient equipment was finding its way into the region. Of course the crisis has passed, but these elderly booms are still here and working.

Really old tower cranes are far less common, but they are about, and they have generally been thrashed. Earlier this year, Paul King, an operations manager at a local crane erection company said that the quality of the steelwork should be inspected regularly if a crane is to be used beyond its normal lifespan.

“You see 1960s tower cranes up at full height, lifting maximum weight. It should have non-destructive testing every fifteen years. There is no way in the world that a forty-year-old crane should be lifting maximum weight at maximum height,” he said.

He added that most manufacturers state that ten percent of the metal should be tested every twelve years or so. “To me it is ridiculous putting up such old cranes that haven’t had any testing since the day they were made,” King added.

Officially, tower cranes don’t have a designed-in lifespan, but the desert heat and around-the-clock working takes their toll, leading to these concerns about the strength of the metal.

Simulations

Of course, there are now ways of training operators that don’t involve lots of downtime. Crane simulators, as with other types of virtual training environments, are slowly being accepted in the region. One of the first companies to adopt this technology was ports operator DP World. On our last visit, training developer Robin Windley explained: “Traditionally this industry has used live equipment for the benefit for training operators.

“Now this is fine when you have the spare capacity, but obviously when the crane is working, operations take precedent.”

“One of the alternatives is to find something that is close to the real environment and a simulator is as close as you will ever get.”

As with cranes, the two types simulator broadly fit in to two types of category: fixed plant and mobile.

When we visited the firm this time last year it had just completed the installation of both types, with the fixed unit being housed in a specially constructed arena, where a realistic gantry crane cabin sat atop of robotic struts, and was surrounded on all sides by screens.

Another ‘mobile’ version was being used at the same location with most of the features except the hydraulic struts. The unit was referred to as being portable, as it was built into a shipping container, where it could be carted off wherever the company needed it. Windley speculated that it could be shipped to areas from where operators were recruited, so they might be tested before the an offer of employment is made.

There are more benefits to this kind of training than simply logistics and downtime. For a start, modern simulators feel very, very real, with reports that some trainees discover a fear of heights due to the realistic movements and screen projections. You can’t be physically hurt on a simulator, and operators can be trained in high winds, thunderstorms, night time and just about any other environmental hazard that a trainee is unlikely to see until he is in a job.



Another key benefit of this type of training is that the computer that logs the operator’s movements and never looks the other way; in other words, if a mistake is made, it is logged.

Electronics

However, once up in the air, there are other things that can be done to make cranes safer. One of these is to use remote control.

There have been several fatal accidents in which operators have overridden the safety controls in order to carry loads that are too high for the distance they are reaching. However, new crane control software will make such accidents a thing of the past, at least according to one company that supplies such equipment.

"The reason for these accidents is down to a lack of preparation,” said Albert Fitoussi, general manager of Metho Cad. Studying the site layout would reveal potential problems, but Fitoussi suggests that only about a quarter of sites actually do it.

Such software is expensive of course, and would usually be specified when brand-new cranes are first ordered.  However, when combined with the other developments, we should have safer sites, and fewer collapses. Happy lifting. 

One country has already taken steps to limit the maximum working life of mobile cranes. Singapore has restricted heavy cranes (deemed to be above 100,000kg)  to a maximum life of 30 years – regardless of whether the top structure has been replaced or not.

Lighter cranes have life spans of 20-25 years depending on weight. Such a blanket ban might not answer the real points regarding stress fractures and metal fatigue though. Additionally, older cranes can still be used if they pass frequent third party inspections.