Compartmentalized Stillages and poor rigging choices in Washington State.

 

I was on my way home when I saw a new tower crane up. I swing by to see what's going on. This is what I found. A four post stillage that was once a rated lifter has been drilled into so plywood could be bolted to it. Awesome. Some tower cranes like to have plywood around them to keep people from climbing them at night for lolz. Can we just drill into the crane and bolt it on? What's the difference between that, and this? Number of potential fatalities? 

The problem here is just like the one I faced in starting crane inspections here in Washington State. No one understood the dangers of what they were doing. Welding structure to shackles? There was a well known attachments company doing just that. One of the largest names in cranes was making their own tower bolts. Weld in a hook because the spring for the latch was wearing out. Hell yeah! These are all real things. The worst thing I saw was a guy shooting nails into a tower crane anchorage because his water proofing needed to be there. Good lord. 

We got people educated on how to safely maintain cranes. Now the education on lifters is what's lacking. The problem is that the Crane Department at Labor and Industries seems to not care an ounce about their own requirements and the quality of structural lifters. I've literally sent over a dozen pictures of issues and they claim they have done a great job. Cool. 

The reality is that lifters need to be structurally sound. The same engineering principles you use with your crane, apply to lifters. Dents, bends, cuts, drilled holes... all reasons to remove from service. Attachments are required to have a 3:1 safety factor unless they are "engineered and rated". Then they need to be load tested to 125% as well. When you use lifters with damage, they no longer will meet that safety factor. They need repair, or replacement. Instead people in the field feel like they can just make a field judgement. It's a real, "What are you doing?" moment. 

If you want bins with compartments, we even manufacture a solution similar to this. We call them a "board holder". 

They are set up to accommodate 1" boards or plywood. So you would build a bottom that locks in place. Then you drop on the holders and then boards in them. If you want to cross up for specific compartments, that's great. This way you don't have any structural deviations from the design or damage added to the structure. We can also do them in several ways with bins that have sides. Just tell me what you need to be successful and we'll get you a price. It's not even expensive. Our 1311's with master links in powder coat are $106 a unit as of the writing of this. Instead we should take risks? It's pretty crazy to take a risk for a few hundred dollars. 

We need an attitude shift that permeates from the crane operators down. Your lifters should not be altered or heavily damaged. If you are a rigger and you are lifting these and you couldn't have known of a problem, you should be fairly protected from liability. If you alter a bin to be lifted, or you know it's damaged and you lift it, and an accident happens, oh buddy. You have an accreditation that says you should know better. And the solutions aren't that hard. You just need the professionalism to look at your employer and say, "I can't. Here's the solution." If you have the title of "Qualified Rigger" or "Lift Director", you should be taking that to heart. The job and life of everyone there is relying on you. We know we can't rely on OSHA or Labor and Industries to do their part. They've had since 1970 to get this right, and they haven't. It's up to us field people to ensure we all go home. Do your part.