What equipment do you need on a building site? You might think about excavators and trucks to carry away the spoil as the foundations are dug, but as the building starts to grow, the importance of a crane becomes more obvious. While cranes can be used for moving materials around the building site from one location to the next, their more frequent use is to move building materials to an elevated location where they can be incorporated into the next stage of the building project. When you need to move anything by a crane, then one area where you will want to pay particular attention is the rigging.

Why does the rigging matter?

It is essential that your crane is able to operate safely throughout the duration of your building project. While much of your attention may be taken up with maintaining the crane and ensuring that the crane operator knows what they need to do, you cannot afford to ignore the rigging. The rigging is the connection between the crane and the load that you want to move. Before the crane is allowed to begin lifting the load, you must be certain that the correct rigging has been used, that the rigging has been correctly attached to both the crane and the load and that the load is not going to shift while it is being moved.

What else do you need to check?

Once you have examined the rigging, there is still a lot to do to make sure that every crane lift can happen safely. You must understand the capabilities of the crane and ensure that you are not trying to complete a lift that is beyond the maximum load for the crane or needed somewhere that the crane cannot reach. You will also need to check that the area where the lift will take place has been cleared of workers and spectators so that if something should go wrong, there is no risk of anyone on the ground being injured by falling material.

To find out more about what is involved in the safe operations of cranes on building sites, talk to a qualified professional today. A construction equipment supplier will be able to guide your decisions and ensure that you only have correctly trained crane operators and riggers and well-maintained cranes and rigging that will operate correctly and safely at all times while on your site.