TRAINING
student is different, because sometimes the delegates are operators who have been using their crane every single day, but then I have also had people who have never used the crane at all since they did their novice training three years back. “There are skills that you pick up when you
are using a crane, such as taking the swing out of the load, moving the crane at the right time to correct for that. Not all of our customers’ cranes have anti-sway technology. Indeed, some of them are using cranes that are 50 years old. But sometimes refresher training is simply about getting familiar with the controls on a new or different crane.”
And rigging is every bit as important as operating the crane. “If you are going to be using a crane there is a good chance you are going to be using eyebolts, shackles, slings, that kind of thing. So we cover that in our course. And we will also cover just rigging on its own as a separate course if that is what the customer wants.”
“It is all about giving confidence and familiarity and the ability to work things out for themselves,” says Robbins’ colleague, James Wall, business development manager for customer training, UK and Ireland. On-the-job practicalities matter as well: “We call it ‘Point of Work’ training. We talk about things such as: ‘What do you do with the crane when you have
finished moving the load, or have finished your shift?’ Of course, you must not leave it in an unsafe condition, but there can be more to it than that. There is the production level as well: we will talk about real things that they are surprised that no instructor has ever taught them. “For example, if you have two gantry- cranes sharing a single runway, and on each gantry there are two hoists, we’ll ask them the importance of a home location. Suppose at the end of the day you leave the hoist roughly in the middle and one gantry in the middle, and you come back in the morning and find that the hoist has broken down. It is bang in the way of the other gantry, so you have just lost 60% of your factory production that day. Why not park one of the gantries right at one end of the building and the other gantry right at the other end? Then if one hoist goes down you can still cover the full length of the building, so production can still go ahead. “On one of the sites we train at, the crane is not allowed to be down for more than seven minutes. More than that and the whole plant shuts down. So those things are important. “It means that the benefits of training are not only safety. That is obviously huge, but there is also making sure that the factory’s productivity is not impacted by a small breakdown. It is much more than just ticking boxes – it is about
the real-life application of training: how do we keep the factory moving? How do we keep people employed? How do we keep faith with the end user, with the customer?” Is there one frequent error that new or
refresher operators make or need reminding of? There is, says Wall, and it is a simple one: “I think knowing the weight of the load is an important one that can get overlooked. It is important because you need to select the right lifting tackle, and there may be multiple different items that combine together to make up the lifting tackle.” “Another one is the rate factor and de- rating,” says Robbins. “I think that is the most common thing I come across. A lot of novices don’t understand that if you have a one-tonne sling, it might not actually be able to lift one tonne. Depending on how you are rigging it up and how you are using it, it might only be able to lift much less. You have got to take the sling angle into account.
“With any accessory, the SWL could be considerably less than what is marked on it. These are things that people get wrong and that novices are surprised about when they get the training,” explains Robbins. Modern technology – anti-sway, anti- collision, automatic programming and the like – has made things safer. But that technology has to be used, and has to be understood. “All
A classroom lesson on ropes at Carl Stahl Evita.
22 | November 2025 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
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