Training Will Address New OSHA Crane Regulations

The new OSHA regulations on crane operation and certification just came out last week. Understandably, there are a lot of people interested in how this will affect them. In OSHA’s words, “approximately 267,000 construction, crane rental, and crane certification establishments employing about 4.8 million workers will be affected by this rule.” It’s one of OSHA’s biggest regulation overhauls in decades.

The new regulations only affect work having to do with construction. General industry work is not affected and will remain governed by the current standard. It’s important to understand the nature of what constitutes “construction work” by OSHA standards. If you are not familiar with these distinctions, I’d recommend reading this OSHA document on construction vs. maintenance/service work.

The major changes in the new regulations include:

• Federal requirements for the certification of crane operators
• Requirements for third-party crane operator certifiers
• Increased crane inspection requirements
• Requirements for working near electricity
• More rules for assembling/disassembling cranes
• New requirements for inspecting ground conditions prior to a lift
• Qualifications for riggers and signalpersons
• New requirements for using synthetic slings

You can read the full OSHA regulations by clicking here. If you’re very interested, you can read more about how the new regulations were agreed upon and how the specific changes were made by clicking here. Also, there’s a really good question and answer session OSHA held recently that’s very informative.

We’ve ramped up our production schedule to get out our new crane training modules out as soon as we can. We’re currently working on getting the storyboards aligned with the new rules. Two of our planned modules are entitled “Overhead Crane Training” and “Mobile Crane Training”. We’re also considering modules specifically about working around electricity and assembling/disassembling booms, because those are the two leading causes of death in crane-related incidents. We also might add a general module about rigging and slings.

Overhead cranes aren’t affected too much by the new OSHA regulations, just because the new regs only apply to construction work, and not to general industry. Mobile cranes and tower cranes will of course be greatly impacted.

All regulations related to crane maintenance, crane operation, and qualifications for signalpersons and riggers will take effect November 8, 2010. Crane operators will have up to four years to meet the new certification requirements.

Jeffrey Dalto

Jeffrey Dalto

Jeffrey Dalto is an Instructional Designer and the Senior Learning & Development Specialist at Convergence Training. He's worked in training/learning & development for 25 years, in safety and safety training for more than 10, is an OSHA Authorized Outreach Trainer for General Industry OSHA 10 and 30, has completed a General Industry Safety and Health Specialist Certificate from the University of Washington/Pacific Northwest OSHA Education Center and an Instructional Design certification from the Association of Talent Development (ATD), and is a member of the committee creating the upcoming ANSI/ASSP Z490.2 national standard on online environmental, health, and safety training. Jeff frequently writes for magazines related to safety, safety training, and training and frequently speaks at conferences on the same issues, including the Washington Governor's Safety and Health Conference, the Oregon Governor's Occupational Safety and Health Conference, the Wisconsin Safety Conference, the MSHA Training Resources Applied to Mining (TRAM) Conference, and others.

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