Hi all,
I am part of an engineering maintenance/construction company that works as an Alliance partner on a Pharmaceutical site. We have been established on this site for 20 years so we have a vast amount of experience with the site and conditions.

Anyway, the client has recently been advised by the HSE that they are not doing enough in reviewing method statement and risk assessments for its site contractors. With this statement the client has reviewed its current procedures with a view to improving their commitment to monitoring the assessments for all work. Parts of the assessments are crane lifting studies. In the past our resident Appointed Person has been nominated to produce all lifting studies and where necessary approve other lifting studies on behalf of the client. Apparently the HSE have stated that they don’t have enough involvement with the planning of work and should approve all method statements on site.

The client has put an employee through the appointed persons (Lifting Operations) course so they are familiar with the process of crane studies. The problem here is the clients AP is not comfortable with approving lifting studies without actually taking all the measurements himself and doing all the relevant calculations himself. His thoughts are, how can he approve the study unless he knows the calculations and measurements are correct. He may as well do the studies himself if this is the case!!

I believe the discussion with the HSE has been lost in translation somewhere and they would actually be happy for the client to accept the lifting study, not approve it. By this I mean the can accept the study has been completed, the crane checks have been done, all the permits are in place, etc. This way they can leave the lifting and the planning to the experts!!
What do you think? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Dan

Alex

Thanks for response.

The lifts are classed as CPA hire as far as I am concerned. The way the Alliance contract is set up clouds the process slightly as the client employees us to do all the work on site but they place the order on the crane because they want it to go through their SAP system.

The client AP trusts our judgment through experience because we have controlled all lifts on site for many years. The only sticking point is when the HSE told them they need more involvement in reviewing contractor’s method statements. The client then realised lifting studies are method statements and therefore should be reviewed.

As you will know you do need some technical knowledge in order to review lifting studies; however I believe the HSE would be happy if the client just checked to make sure all documentation was in place before the lift progressed. Surely every workplace cannot have a competent AP on site to review lifting studies. That’s why contract lifts are available!!

Thanks again
Dan