Konecranes , a world leader in crane service and safety compliance advises industry to carefully respond to the latest Australian Standard revisions devised for the safe use of cranes.
 
The latest crane inspection and assessment guidelines that will bring Australia and New Zealand closer to global standards of risk management include extensive revision of the inspection and maintenance requirements and the addition of a new section that specifies methods to monitor design duty and introduce the concept of design working period.
 
Introduced with an aim to reduce the risk of accidents to people involved in lifting operations and those in their vicinity, as well as damage to property, the new standards will impact major industry sectors including mining and energy, steel making and distribution, manufacturing and metal fabrication processing, ports and shipping, resources infrastructure (including oil and gas) and manufacturing, packaging and paper processing as well as workshop and heavy maintenance.
 
One of the world’s largest crane service organisations with more than 410,000 cranes of all makes under service standards worldwide, the Konecranes Group believes that the implications of the provisions of AS 2550.1 (2011) are only now starting to be realised in major industry segments.
 
Businesses that use overhead cranes in their day-to-day operations should seek authoritative guidance on understanding and anticipating the changes as they take effect on an ongoing basis, says the Managing Director of Konecranes (Australia and New Zealand) Mr Brad Hyem.
 
According to Mr Hyem, cranes and hoists are common items of worksite machinery but have the potential to be among the most dangerous if they are not properly maintained and safety compliant. The new revisions to crane safety compliance standards should therefore be clearly understood across the spectrum of industry.
 
Mr Hyem says one of the major areas of change and safety reinforcement focused on by the latest standards relate to consistency and frequency of inspections specified in Standard 2550.1 (2011) 7.3.1.
 
Focus areas include:

  • Pre-operational inspection, which is vital to safety
  • Routine maintenance and inspection, which is key to reliability
  • Periodic third-party inspections, which include essential areas of compliance requirements
  • Major inspections of cranes, which have a major bearing on safety, reliability and lifecycle cost
Another key area of change is the requirement to ascertain the remaining design working period (DWP) according to processes and calculations summarised in a new section (9) of AS2550.1; DWP is then used to determine when a major inspection (and subsequent general overhaul) is due.
 
There are also products available such as TruConnect, which provides real time data via a modem so equipment owners can log in and see exactly how their equipment is operating.
 
New provisions have also been introduced concerning the competency of persons for inspections, as spelt out by Clause 1.4.1, and to the requirements for major assessments contained in AS2550.1 and 2550.3.

Konecranes’ Australia-New Zealand business recently received the Group’s top global safety award for outstanding performance among Group operations spanning nearly 50 countries and more than 12,000 employees, all of whom are trained to operate in accordance with the Group’s global safety signature, ‘Hooked on Safety’.