26.06.2006

Crane Safety conference success

This years Crane safety conference in London attracted over 140 delegates from as far afield as New Zealand.

It was also encouraging to see a higher turnout of UK and Irish delegates this year.

The conference was held in Bloomsbury, London on Thursday and Friday last week. A wide range of speakers covered safety topics concerning Mobile, Overhead and tower cranes.

Ian Simpson of the HSE broke the HSE’s silence on the Canary wharf/Canada Square tower crane accident. Given that no further legal action will now be taken.

He gave an exceptionally detailed review of the unfortunate accident which killed three, covering the lessons learnt and exactly what went wrong.
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The Crane Safety Conference

As part of his presentation, Søren Jensen of Denmark’s BMS discussed how his crane operators must take responsibility for the lift as soon as they raise the load. He also said that if any BMS operator is caught overriding the cranes safety systems, including the rated load indicator, he is immediately dismissed.

Stuart Anderson got a few of the Load indicator manufacturers “hot under the collar” with his presentation. He suggestion that there are over 120,000 cranes working which were never fitted with overload systems and many many more whose original systems no longer work.

He praised PAT’s (PAT was not represented) efforts but suggested that most LMI producers are making little attempt to market their products to the wider retrofit market. Or to help improve safety in those markets, lagely the third world, where indicators are not widely used.

Derrick Bailes of the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) gave a detailed talk and specific examples of how poor rigging can cause serious accidents and damage productivity.

These were just a few of the presentations, along with plenty of chances for delegates to 'network', in what most people agreed was a couple of useful days.

Further details on many of the presentations will be carried in future copies of Cranes&Access.