Comprehensive Plan Details Prior to Crane Hire and Mobilisation

14 February 2020

Cranes are operated by professionals who have adequate training and years of working experience. These professionals follow comprehensive lifting plan details so that they won’t harm people and inflict damage to the properties around them. Moreover, they strictly follow these plans so that the lifting operations are done smoothly.

To get the most out of crane mobilisation, here are some processes that comprehensive plans possess for you to take note of. These processes help you create a comprehensive plan detail whenever you are hiring cranes for your construction project.

Initiate Site Planning

Not all construction sites require the use of cranes. In fact, most construction firms initiate site planning first before employing some cranes and other tools for the project. To determine if the site is applicable for crane use, a client must submit a site survey to the crane service. This site survey is composed of the site address, the layout of the area, access routes, lifting location, involved construction materials, material handling location, and surrounding job site activities.

Apart from the site survey, a site supervisor or a project manager will assess the site to make sure that the construction site is suitable for crane operations. Moreover, a crane hire member will also perform an additional site visit to personally assess the ground conditions of the site before erecting the crane and its accessories.

Evaluate Ground Conditions

To evaluate ground conditions, a structural engineer is sent to the construction site so he or she can ensure that a suitable load-bearing base is established before installing the crane. Determining the access routes of the crane transport vehicles and actual crane operations is also taken into consideration when assessing ground conditions. Through the help of a site supervisor, the ground surface of a construction site is evaluated to make sure it can support necessary loads and can provide access routes for crane installation.

The assessment for ground conditions requires geotechnical site-specific information, structural drawings, architectural drawings, and site-specific surveys of surrounding structures’ height.

Identify Hazards and Risks

When carrying out crane operations, it is very important to assess hazards and risks on the construction site. A risk assessment is conducted to know if there are any possible hazards and risks whenever crane operations are performed. This assessment is done by implementing appropriate control measures, which can ultimately reduce the possibility of any fatal accidents as much as possible.

Some crane-related hazards that you should watch out for include electrical hazards, extreme weather conditions, collision with nearby structures, overloading of cranes, falling materials, and many more.

Set Operation Objectives

Once the surrounding conditions are assessed, it is important that you set your operation objectives to the crane operators. Each crane is set to operate depending on their capacities, limitations, and safe working loads. By setting your operation objectives, crane operators can easily determine the type of crane required for your construction site.

Operation objectives include descriptions and details of the loads that will be lifted and moved by the cranes. Some load descriptions are load weight, load dimensions, availability of lifting points, pickup radius, final location radius, and lifting heights of the load.

Choose Appropriate Personnel

Crane lifting operations must be done by people who are truly experienced. This experience is translated through years of work in the field and the success rate of construction activities. People who will be hired for crane operations must have sufficient technical and practical knowledge and training about the lifting process.

An experienced crane operation team can smoothly do the lifting process according to your perceived plans. A good operation team is usually composed of crane operators, riggers, signal persons, site supervisors, lift directors, operation managers, and project managers.

Having a comprehensive plan for your crane hire and mobilisation is extremely important to avoid any unwanted delays and accidents on your construction project. To know more about crane operations, you can ask us now at Sharp Welding and Crane Hire Services.