How to Put Together a Critical Lift Plan
If your business depends on crane technology in any capacity, one of the most urgent and important safety and logistical concerns you’ll face is a situation involving a critical lift.
A critical lift is any operation involving a crane in which there are heightened risk factors and thus no acceptable margin of error. A critical lift requires extra planning, extra manpower, and flawless execution. Failure to properly anticipate and plan for a critical lift can result in loads being catastrophically damaged, damage to equipment, extensive project delays, and even loss of life.
It’s vital to know what a critical lift is and, more importantly, how to categorized your lift accordingly.
How to Know if Your Lift is Critical
While there is no universally accepted definition, experience and extensive research has taught us that a robust list of factors contribute to what we should consider a critical lift. The best general guideline to follow is to always side with safety and adequate planning when a lift is in question. If you have any doubt that your standard lift equipment and procedures are inadequate to meet the needs of the operation, you should always treat it as a critical lift.
Cover the Critical Lift Checklist
Does the lift exceed 75% of your crane’s capacity? Are multiple cranes required for the lift? Will the lift require the load to be manipulated outside the operator’s view at any time? Does the lift involve an unusual, unusually technical rigging arrangement? Could the damage to the uniquely valuable load produce serious monetary losses? Would damaging the load cause serious delays to an important project timeline?
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then the odds are overwhelming you have a critical lift ahead of you.
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