Why Mobile Cranes Are Inspected
The failures that inspection is there to prevent, and what this awareness course does and does not give you.
8 min
Activities: 0 of 2
A mobile crane holds a heavy load high in the air. The load hangs on a wire rope. The rope runs over sheaves on a boom. The boom is held by hydraulic cylinders or by more rope. The whole machine stands on outriggers, tyres or tracks, and they stand on the ground.
Every link in this chain wears, corrodes, loosens or gets damaged in normal work. A crane rarely fails because of one sudden event. More often a small defect grows, shift after shift, until one lift is too much for it. Inspection is the planned search for these defects while they are still small and cheap to repair.
This course applies to truck-mounted, all-terrain, rough-terrain and crawler cranes. It teaches you what to look for, what good looks like and what to do when you find a defect.
Five failures that inspection prevents
What you should already know
Crane types, the main parts of a crane, basic operation and the roles in a lift are taught in the course Mobile and Tower Cranes: An Introduction. Lift planning, load charts in depth, slings and rigging are taught in the course Lifting Operations and Rigging Safety. Here they are only recalled in a line where an inspection point needs them.
Why is it wrong to rely on the crane "starting to tip" as the warning of an overload or a defect?
Failure and early sign
Match each failure with a sign that inspection can find early.
- Structural failure
- Rope failure
- Overturning
- Dropped load
- Runaway