One could say a good operator must have eyes in the back of their head, they must be an expert soils analyst, they must be capable of reading detailed site plans to determine the location of underground utilities, they must have a weather alert set up for adverse conditions, they must be a policeman capable of keeping people out from under their loads and away from swinging machinery, they must have night vision when working in dimly lit conditions, and they must anticipate everyone’s moves around their machine, much like a mind reader.
To add to this list of masterful skills, an operator must be capable of doing each of the above while watching for incorrect rigging, matching load and load movement to a complex load chart, and performing these tasks while staring into the sun. All in all they must have quite a few skills.
Operating a crane and maintaining job site safety is a tough job. Even if you are ‘Super Craneman’ you may have a difficult time doing all these things at once, (or at least while staring into the sun). You need help and you need to know who can render help when it’s needed. Attempting to do all of these things just isn’t practical. A good crane operator, one who doesn’t operate by the seat of the pants, knows when to get help and has tremendous situational awareness.
Over the next several weeks, Crane Tech is going to explore the use of the Job Safety Analysis (JSA) to help the crane/lifting team to identify potential hazards, rate the hazards and abate them, before the operator even sits in the seat.
In the meantime, we’d love to hear if you have a pre-work JSA that is used every shift.
Please take our poll (opens in a new window) and/or register to post your thoughts or let us know about your JSA procedures below.