What needs to be in your lifting permit to work?

There are two main purposes for your lifting permit - both of which need to be accounted for in the contents of your lifting permit.

Firstly, lifting permits are for safety record keeping and compliance. The penalties and repercussions of not complying with safety rules and regulations can be serve - not to mention that poor record keeping often costs companies hundreds of thousands or millions of dollar in unfair claims which they don't have the evidence or proof to dispute.

For this reason, each and everyone of your records should be appropriately designed, marked and stored for safe and comprehensive record keeping.

Every lifting permit should include a number of basic information items:

• Automated form number
• Project and lift details
  • The work area where the lift will take place
  • The duration of the planned lift or lifts
  • The safe work method statement reference number (SWMS)
  • The type of crane used
  • A brief description of the lift
  • A description of the load and load weight

The next section of the form is a risk assessment, which ensures that all of the potential risks are understood and have been accounted for and mitigated to the best of everyones ability.

Part of this risk assessment is for the operators own processes and workflows, although research has proven they are pretty good in this realm:

Statistics show operators are only responsible for 13% of accidents.

The risk assessment is equally important for external factors and factors outside of the crane operator and dogmen's control.

The risk assessment checklist (for a general lift plan) focuses on identifying and controlling for:

• Tag lines
• Electrical hazards
• Ground conditions
• Shallow underground services
• Exclusion zones

The dogman/rigger and crane operator will also declare and test their communication equipment.

This lift permitting example is indicative of a normal general lift - with more serious and potentially dangerous lifts requiring additional permitting fields and requirements.

Critical lift plans, which are required for high risk scenarios, where the cranes capacity is exceeding the regular operating limits, or where work is in extremely close proximity to assets or the public - require much more detail about the lift coordination team, and specifics around the crane and load components and dimensions, capacity checks and configurations.

But no matter what type of lift is being performed, or how 'standard' it seems or feels, lift permitting is a reliable way to prevent avoidable mistakes and increase the safety of your people, projects and assets.