Who makes sure our operator safety programs are providing the right information?

I had a very interesting text message last week, the question was:
“Hey Steve, can you tell me what oversight there is with your crane safety program as in who has vetted your program or others for the training?”

EXCELLENT question and I will be fully transparent…There is ZERO oversight and no one has vetted our programs.

Surprised? Don’t be.
In many Canadian provinces there are no associations, no oversight, no vetting of anyone’s programs what-so-ever.

I have been an advocate of safety for many, many years and our only guidance in Canada is the CSA standards for those types of cranes as well as the Provincial OH&S (which do take their insight from any pertinent CSA standard there may be.

In B.C for example, with respect to crane safety, they have BCACS or BC Association for Crane Safety, and also to clarify, B.C follows ASME crane standards (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) for those who may not be familiar.

Why is there no ability to verify these programs you may ask and who does the vetting of the instructors, companies, etc.?
It is an entirely self regulated industry and do I agree with that? No I don’t and have been a staunch advocate for an association in Alberta to the point it is now due or overdue to be started.

To clarify, we (I) follow the appropriate CSA standard as well as provincial OH&S standards as that is the best we have and many years of experience selling, installing and working with customers alike.
Think about organizations like Energy Safety Canada, or the aforementioned BC Crane Safety or any other province (there are precious few) that do have an association, vetting of a program is a good thing, a very good thing, I’ve met several OHS officers over the past many years and while they do not endorse any company, they do endorse crane specific training and where we differ is having taken training from 3 different crane manufacturers ongoing with updates, we consider ourselves at the front of the group and our 250+ customers that keep coming back to us a validation especially since many of those companies have trade operators that have taken our program(s) and agree that while one day programs are not long enough, we put in the right information to give operators a solid foundation on which to improve/grow.

I firmly believe that a crane safety program should be not less than 3 days minimum, if not 1 week, and include items such as the obvious crane safety, proper operator inspections, rigging, load handling and more.

more to follow…