One cranky old crane man’s story (or why I often end up in arguments with people…)

I started mucking around with cranes in February of 1977, in Perth in Western Australia at the age of 19 and a bit. I had left school at age 15. Hated the place. I’d had pretty good marks but just couldn’t stay interested or engaged. So after a succession of labouring and truck driving stints, none of which lasted more than a few months, I ended up at Linmac Pty Ltd, who were the distributors of the BHB articulated tractor crane. I started by driving the spare parts ute and sweeping the floors, making the tea, picking up the lunch orders. With my short attention span, I thought I’d give this a go for a while and see what happens. What happened was, I got more and more interested in the cranes. I was fascinated by the way they could pick up 10 tonnes and just waddle off with it and put it somewhere else. I’d always had an affinity for driving and operating things and these cranes were the best big boys toy I’d ever come across. So I pushed and wheedled and dropped hints until I was allowed to do some more interesting work with them. It started by becoming the guy who was taken in the boss’s car to the BHB factory where the basic machine was built. When Linmac took delivery of the cranes, they were simply a Chamberlain agricultural tractor that had the front wheels removed, and then the remains were bolted to the main frame, off the front of which, was hanging the very basic boom with one hydraulic and one manual boom extension. They were unpainted, unlicensed, and had no cab yet. They also had no counterweight box yet. So regardless of the weather, I would hop on these things and drive them back the approximately 10 kilometres to Linmac’s yard. 40 degree heat or pouring rain, it didn’t matter, there was a schedule to be met and they had to be taken back to our yard and then be fitted out with all the customers chosen features. Then they were driven back to BHB for painting, then back again to Linmac for final testing and shipping to all points of Australia. As an aside, on the cranes first trip from BHB to Linmac, without the counterweight box, and with all that weight on the front of the mainframe, some corners had to be treated with great respect, I can tell you. You only go too fast and cock an inside front wheel just once, before you learn to slow down and treat the machine with respect. This is also where I first found out I had a built in biological overload sensor. Not sure what that is? Hint; you’re sitting on it… Fast forward a bit and I’m now fitting out the cranes, including welding on the air power brake components. No, I wasn’t a certified welder. A bloke showed me how to weld and once I got good enough at it, I was set loose. That’s the way things were done then. Can you imagine that now? I also fitted the machines out with electrical accessories such as lighting and overload protection. The overload protection was very sophisticated. A piece of RHS was welded to the mainframe near the turntable. At the other end of the RHS was a micro-switch fixed to another bracket welded further up the mainframe. When the mainframe bent enough under load, the switch was tripped, which activated an air powered actuator, which was attached to a tee shaped bracket which then knocked the levers out of the operators hands. Yeah baby, technology at its finest! But the best part was doing the overload testing for all locally ordered machines. Any crane staying in Western Australia had to be overload tested before it could be certified and registered for use in WA. From memory we had to be at 125% of capacity and then fully articulate the crane. Crane didn’t fall over? Pass. Next. I loved this process because I had a great boss who would always be there in person when the testing was done. He was the first bloke to start telling me things like “No, you can’t use that chain because…” and “The shackle has to be used like this because…” and “The reason we do this is because…” He gave a lot of his time and was very patient and clear in his explanations. I admit, however, there were also times when he said things like “SLOW DOWN, FFS…” Sorry, boss. And after a while I got to the point where he was happy for me do it on my own. At one such test, the Government inspectors who came out to witness and sign off on the tests said “You know, you really should have a crane operators ticket to do this” And no, after nearly four years of driving, fitting out and testing, I had never even thought about a license and nor did anyone else. That was the way it was. So, long story short, I did the homework, sat the test, and was eventually granted a crane operators ticket. Back then, you had to have a letter from another ticketed operator that you had done 100 hours to get a “Restricted” ticket (any crane with a boom 15 mtrs or less), or 300 hours for an “Unrestricted” (any crane, other than steam driven, with a boom in excess of 15 mtrs). They were the only two types of crane ticket in WA then. Because I had done the testing for so long with the same inspectors, they readily accepted my letter for 100 hours from my boss. Funny thing is; Linmac had just introduced the new “8-10” model, which had a 15.7m boom. And that is what I did my practical test on. So when my ticket arrived in the mail, it was for Unrestricted! The boss said “Don’t fuss about it” The inspectors later said “Ha. Good for you” And that was that. Fast forward again. I’ve left Linmac because they promoted me eventually into the sales department. However I quickly realised that I couldn’t schmooze my way out of a wet paper bag and that sales was definitely not for me. I got a job driving a BHB on the construction of Worsley Alumina’s bauxite plant about 170 k’s south of Perth. My first construction job. Very interesting and much better money. I got my first exposure to bigger cranes and a few friendly operators let me have a play on their machines. But there was no way anyone would hire me to drive anything bigger at that time. “You need more experience, sorry” How do I get that if you won’t let me? “Sorry mate, come back when you have it” Sheesh! Not long after, I scored a job with Brambles, the biggest and best crane company in Australia at that time. Well, that’s what Brambles guys said, anyway. I walked straight in and got on to a……BHB 10 tonner. And I sat in it for two more years before I got a bigger crane. You not only had to wait until one became available (and operators left Brambles rarely) but you had no hope until you had proved you were good enough in the small yard based opportunities when a big crane operator would give you a go, usually during maintenance or testing. Only when they had given the boss a nudge and a wink would you move up the ladder. So eventually I rocketed up the ladder to an old Mack B52 with a 13 tonne Tadano slewer on the back. What a machine! Two gearsticks in the front cab. Man, I had some fun getting my head around gear changes. In the top cab, if you had the hydraulic motor driven aircon on, the slew was vicious. It was safer to have it off and sweat through the day rather than slew the boom through a building. Then on to a 20t Kato, then a 30t Kato, a 45t fallover Grove and finally on to a 50t Kato NK500 truck mounted, which was on a huge Australian made carrier with a full width front cab, 14.00 tyres, a Cummins 400 and a beautiful sounding Jake brake. Felt like I was at the top of my game because at that time, there weren’t any Liebherr or Demag type all terrains around in Perth. And there I sat for another few years. What a learning curve. In those days we would be sent out with four 50 tonners to Westrac and pick up 785 dump trucks and 992 loaders, up to 120 tonnes, sometimes with no supervisor and never with a written lift plan. Same thing with locomotives. We did the rigging for each other then got back in the crane. Someone would toot the horn and up we go. You very quickly learnt to keep up. I think the yelling and disapproving looks from the other guys helped speed up that learning process… Thanks mainly to dodgy family genes, by late 1993 after a lot of hard graft I had damaged several vertebra and Osteo Arthritis was creeping in. So I went very quickly from being a union rep crane operator to a crane foreman and then a Supervisor by early 1994. It was a rapid and disorienting change, but it was when I first really had to start thinking about the more technical aspects of cranes and rigging. It became my responsibility to plan and give instructions, not just walk up to a window and get a job card. The easy days were gone. I haven’t gone into a whole lot of detail here about the things we used to do on the cranes. And part of the reason is that so much of it was…well…let’s say…outside the rule book. The job had to be done and there wasn’t a whole lot of thought given to the absolute legality of things. Just get it done. The cranes we had were generally very strong and simple things and could be made to do things they weren’t really designed for. We had ways to get 110t locos back on to their wheels, with two 50 tonners, after derailments. A lot of huffing and puffing, moving cranes to an end at a time, turning the computer off. Things that, these days, would see you off the job in an eye blink. And rightly so. More on this later. At this time, a gentleman by the name of Gretar Jonsson had been developing the use of AutoCAD in creating lift studies, starting in the late Eighty’s I believe. He may not have been the first in the world but was definitely the first in Western Australia to do so, as far as I know. So having seen what he was doing, and thanks to a good tax refund cheque from 1993, I bought our family’s first computer and ended up with a pirate copy of AutoSketch on it. I was hooked from the very start. I went through a whole new learning process, and now I had Gretar getting grumpy with me, as I got more and more into it. But I loved the planning, the calculations, the thinking. I found it immensely satisfying to come up with a lift plan, complete with good looking technical drawings, that my former operator colleagues would find easy to use and didn’t need changing. And when a complicated multi crane lift went off without a hitch, it was very nice to watch and think “I planned that” In 1999, I took the plunge and went out on my own as a crane consultant, hoping to expand further into the field of heavy lift planning. By now I was reasonably proficient with AutoCAD, having graduated from AutoSketch, which was very limited for what I wanted to do. Over the next 10 years, I had some good successes, and a couple of stints back working for the man, and I have now been back in my own business for the last nearly eight years. Starting from 1999, and growing rapidly in importance, was the growing recognition that the things I was doing had to be done correctly, and by the book. I had to understand the rules and regulations. I had to get my head around the relevant Australian Standards. And then understand how the two of them meshed and what obligations they really put on people working in this industry. I had numerous, eye opening moments when I finally realised the things that we had been doing on cranes had been so far out of the park, and had put so many people at risk, that I actually got quite angry about it. And I then made a conscious effort to make sure everything I did was 100% compliant. Of course, that was well received by everyone who paid for my work and used it in the field….not. Compliance comes with a cost. Quite a big one, in lots of cases. I have officially lost count of the number of times I have had to explain the finer points of the requirements for multi crane lifts in Australia. For example, the Australian Standards say that unless a dual crane lift is a “designed lift” that is, there has been a lift plan that has been developed by a competent person, then you must add 20% to the cranes load share, and that number becomes the required capacity of that crane, for that lift sequence. The WA Occupational Safety amp; Health regulations (the legislative document) refers to that standard. So it becomes a legal requirement. Further, the government regs don’t mention designed lifts. So in fact, designed lift or not, you must have that 20% or else you must apply for an exemption to the Act, for that lift. There are dual crane lifts still happening on most days in this state, where the people involved have no understanding of this (I’m not up to speed on other Australian states, I’m focusing on WA here) The sad and worrying part of all this, is that if something goes badly wrong, and people get hurt or far worse, you can guarantee the widow’s solicitor WILL become an instant expert on the issues. So, Mr Client, I’m sorry but those smaller and cheaper cranes you were hoping to use don’t have the required capacity and could in fact put you and your project at great risk. Sorry, Mr Operator, but you need to understand that just because your Supervisor says it’s OK to lift, doesn’t automatically mean he’s not putting you and your family’s future at risk. Go and get the knowledge and get yourself into a position where you can just say no, with a clear conscience. The same thing happens regularly with rigging gear, when I point out that putting a wire sling that is say good for 50 tonnes and has a diameter of 66mm, on to a standard 55t GreenPin bow shackle that has a bow diameter of 65mm, is in fact illegal. At least, in WA. Why? Because AS1666 Wire Rope Slings – Care and Use says where a sling interfaces with a shackle, that shackle SHALL have a supporting surface not less than the rope diameter. Not “should”. Shall. Mandatory. Again, the government regs reference this standard. So as far as I am concerned, it is a legally enforceable rule. So, Mr Client, sorry again but if you want to use that sling to its capacity, you need a much more expensive wide body or sling saver type of shackle. Oh, your ridiculously small rigging budget for the project doesn’t cover that? Ouch… And sorry Mr Rigger, but just because you can’t be bothered walking back to the rigging shed to get the right gear, or you don’t know about this, or we’re in a hurry before the light fades or the wind comes up, is no excuse to “just get it done” Like I used to. There are many other examples. Ground bearing pressures and wind speeds are two of the most painful, from my experience. Too painful and technically tedious to bore you any further with it. Suffice to say, many people have had rude shocks when they are presented with the black and white facts pertaining to what they want to do. But – then there are the practicalities to deal with. You are on a very remote construction site, in the wilds of the Pilbara in far north Western Australia. The crusher has arrived and must be lifted in tomorrow afternoon. There is no choice, this lift is a critical point on the schedule and the cost of holding everything else up by failing to lift is too big to contemplate. But then you find the 55t shackles that were planned to be used, won’t fit because the casting around the lifting lugs is so bad and oval that the pins won’t go through the holes. The crusher manufacturer will not allow you to grind out the holes by a few millimetres, even though that doesn’t reduce the original tear out distance on the lug, because, well, they just won’t. The site rules say that any two of the four shackles must be able to support the entire load, and they refuse to budge on that. So using 35t shackles is not an option. The solution to this true story? We finally found some 55t Super shackles with suitable size pins, in Queensland. They were airfreighted to Pt Hedland then hot shotted by road to site. At huge expense. The boss was not happy. But – much to his credit he listened to what was presented to him and acted quickly. As he said later, a few thousand dollars for that compared to the multi-million dollar value of the crusher, let alone the cost of all that manpower and machinery, was in fact, peanuts. However the potential risk of just grinding the lugs, and crossing fingers that they wouldn’t fail, was just not worth thinking about. Lesson learned? Forget cost, do it the right way. And other examples such as 22 cranes being regularly shut down on a major resource project because the only anemometer on site was at the highest point on the whole job. Later on, when the money was finally spent and wind speed systems were fitted to some cranes it was proved that cranes working behind the growing structures were not getting anywhere near the same wind speeds. The crane anemometers paid for themselves many times over. And the job where the US based EPCM mob decreed that at the end of every shift, every crane had to have the hooks tied back to the superstructure. And every hydraulic crane had to be packed up and taken back to a central parking area. Why? Simply and only because, that was what their rule book said. Once it was pointed out to them that this madness resulted in many thousands of potential manual handling injuries over the projected crane schedule, it quietly disappeared. Score one for common sense, finally. And in this case, much money was saved, not spent on wasted man hours. I could go on and on but by now you’re probably yawning. I suppose my main message is, if you are an end user of cranes, or an operator or a rigger or just starting out in the industry, it is probably worth listening occasionally to cranky old sods like me. A lot of us dont have any formal education or degrees, just a whole lot of experience and tales to tell. Forgive our grumpiness but, occasionally at least, we might just help to save you some grief. Or money. Or from getting yelled at by other grumpy old crane guys...