Crane lift planning: five questions before every lift

Most lifting incidents trace back to planning, not to the crane itself. The machinery is generally reliable and well maintained; what fails is usually an assumption made before the lift ever started. Ask these five questions before every lift, not just the unusual ones.

1. What is the load, really?

Confirm the actual weight, centre of gravity and rigging points, not just the figure printed on the drawing. Drawings describe a design intent, and site reality, wet materials, added fixings, a slightly different batch of components, can shift the true weight and balance enough to matter. Where there is doubt, weigh the load or get a supplier-confirmed figure rather than estimating.

2. Where is the exclusion zone?

Mark it clearly on the ground, communicate it in the briefing before the lift starts, and keep it clear for the whole operation, not just the moment the load is in the air. Zones drift in practice when nobody owns enforcing them; naming a specific person responsible for keeping the zone clear, separate from the person directing the lift, keeps it from being everyone’s job and therefore nobody’s.

3. What is the ground doing?

Check ground bearing capacity under the crane and its outriggers, not just at the base but across the full working radius the crane will swing through, since ground conditions can vary significantly across a site. Outrigger mats spread the load, but they only work if they are correctly sized for the ground and the load being lifted, and a mat that was adequate for a smaller lift earlier in the job may not be adequate for a heavier one later.

4. Who is talking to the operator?

One signaller, one channel, agreed signals, confirmed before the load leaves the ground. A second person trying to direct the operator, even with good intentions, is one of the more common causes of confused or delayed lifts, and standard hand signals or radio phrases agreed in the briefing remove ambiguity that a shouted instruction across a noisy site cannot.

5. What stops the lift?

Agree the wind limit and other stop conditions in advance, in writing, rather than leaving it to judgement in the moment. Wind speed at height can be significantly higher than at ground level, and a crane’s rated wind limit assumes the load being lifted; an item with a large surface area, such as a cladding panel, may need a lower limit than the crane’s general rating suggests. Deciding this before the lift, not during it, takes the pressure of a live decision off the person holding the controls.

Beyond the five questions

A lift plan is only as good as the briefing that delivers it to the people doing the work. Walking the plan through with the whole team immediately before the lift, rather than relying on a document read once at the start of the week, catches the questions that only occur to people once they can see the actual load and the actual site conditions in front of them.

This article is general information and not safety advice.