crane industry news

The Ontario Ministry of Labour announced Monday its inspectors will conduct a safety blitz this month of construction sites with tower cranes, checking access and fall arrest equipment, plus inspection records and certification of operators.

Pieces of the global wind energy market are moving through Vancouver. Through July, trucks and rail cars will haul the enormous wind-energy components — including blades, generators and towers — from the Port of Vancouver to wind farms in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

The Sany Group recently announced manufacturing the world’s largest crawler crane. The jumbo crane rolled off the production line of China’s largest machine manufacturer on Tuesday in east Jiangsu Province, marking a major step forward for the Chinese manufacturing industry.

The company has won two safety awards from the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association (SC&RA). The first was the Crane & Rigging Zero Accident Award. This award is for members that complete the year without a single accident.

The company was preparing to re-roof the building, but when the operator raised the first pack of materials, the crane lost stability and tipped, coming to rest against the leading edge of the building.

A couple of our readers have sent us information and photographs of the new 3,600 tonne Sany SCC86000TM crawler crane. The crane looks like a combination of the Terex CC8800 Twin and Manitowoc’s model 31000. It uses a twin boom and twin derrick mast but employs four sets of tracks in a similar way to the Manitowoc. We are still lacking a great deal of detail, but some of the photos we have seen show a four tracked carriage which looks as though it might be a super-lift counterweight carrier.

Working in construction sites has always been considered as hazardous. In the period between 1997 and 1999, there were 158 accidents which can be considered as crane-related. 73 percent of these crane related accidents involved mobile cranes. Of this number, 10 accidents were caused by electrical contact. This gives people the importance of electrical grounding of mobile cranes.

A new time-lapse video from London’s Olympic park shows the erection of the Arcelor/Mittal Orbit and the vast variety of cranes and work platforms used in the construction of this 115 metre high structure.

A young Rough Terrain crane operator died earlier this week in Arizona, when the crane ran-away’ and overturned. The operator,28, was driving the crane, described as a 100 ton Rough Terrain – although it is substantially smaller – down a dirt track in a granite quarry in Congress, to the North West of Phoenix Arizona.

A reader sent us in a good example that occurred this week on a job site at Southmead hospital, Bristol in the UK. While it does not directly involve a crane or work platform the cautionary tale is equally relevant.

A concrete pump was in action on the site and appeared to have been set properly and according to the contractor’s – Carillion – safety requirements.