Institution news
Now in its fifth successive year and taking place as a live online event, Crane Safety 2020 will once again bring the community together to share best practice and understand how to carry out safe and compliant lifting operations, particularly in the current pandemic.
Ahead of the seminar we caught up with speaker Mark Buckton at NOCN, who will outline standards for competency training for crane operators and successful strategies for adoption and
Q: Please could you briefly explain your role, involvement and experience with regards to Crane Safety.
Mark Buckton (MB): As the Executive Director of CPCS I am hugely interested in the safety of all Plant Operations as this is the single most important reason to have Competency Card Schemes.
Q; What are the main challenges facing the industry at the moment?
MB: This has changed enormously in just the 4 months since the COVID-19 lockdown. Earlier in the year I would have quickly answered sufficient skilled, competent and reliable human resource, but now there is also the challenge of attracting that resource and then being able to apply it onsite within safe working practices for COVID-19.
Q: How have restrictions from COVID-19 been affecting your operations?
MB: We saw a quick drop in CPCS tests taking place. We quickly provided guidance to our centres and we have seen the volume of testing come back up to close to pre pandemic levels. The CPCS were also the only card scheme to quickly produce a totally different COVID-19 competency card to identify operators who had not been able to renew their cards but needed in date certification.
Q: What are your top tips when tackling a new lifting challenge?
MB: Use competent, trained and assessed individuals who you can be sure meet the industry standard requirements for lifting.
Q: What developments in the crane industry are you most interested in for the future and why?
MB: The challenges of offsite Construction and the more frequent lifting of large panelised and manufactured units during normal day to day construction. Especially when linked to the logistics train this will need to work closely with.
Q: Why is it important for engineers to join this year’s Crane Safety seminar?
MB: Engineers and all the more professional construction job roles need to have a good awareness of lifting and the difficulties presented during lifting operations so they can take account of these at the earliest possible stage of the process.
Crane Safety takes place on 15 September 2020, online. Join us for the live online seminar to understand how to ensure that your lifting projects are carried out with a high level of safety and are compliant with the latest industry regulation.
Hear insights and lessons learned from
- Sir Robert McAlpine
- Health and Safety Executive
- Laing O’Rourke
- Babcock International
- EnerMech Ltd
together with an international keynote from The Men from Marr in Australia.
For full details and to book your place visit the event website.