29.02.2016

Near miss in UK

A large All Terrain crane suffered an outrigger beam failure on a job in Southern England last week.

The crane thought to be a 350 tonner belongs to Southern Crane & Access and was set up complete with superlift system to install or remove a tower crane when one of the rear outrigger beams appears to have given way.

The crane was well set up, with decent spreader places and mats, on the congested site and it appears from the photographs that we have received that the failed outrigger beam was short rigged. The boom was only partially extended with the large counterweight over the rear outriggers.
Please register to see all images

The rear outrigger failed

Fortunately the beam failed in this configuration and no one was hurt and the damage appears to be limited to the outrigger beam concerned. At this stage we do not know what caused the failure, but did wonder if the beam was extended to a length that was not designed to handle heavy loadings? Although if this is the crane we think it is, it does offer four outrigger beam extension positions.

We will update this article as soon as we have more information on what might have caused the incident,