Ive been asked about whether or not an overhead crane hoist rope breaking is reportable as a dangerous occurrence or not given the following information available.

As an example, if during normal operations, the hoist rope broke causing a load to fall to the floor, I would expect to report this as a failure under normal working conditions.

However, if for example during exceptional circumstances i.e a piece of machinery is loaded with material used for production and then suffers an in use breakdown and needs emptying quickly to prevent huge costs as well as potentially hazardous work to clear a blockage.   If this piece of equipment was lifted with the intention of being able to drop the material out from under the equipment, with the assumption that it was within the working limit of the crane, subsequently resulting in a hoist rope failure and then found to have overloaded the hoist rope, would this constitute accidental damage to the hoist rope, rather than failure under normal lifting.  the guidance is fairly woolly in this area and I wondered what others interpretation would be.

the guidance page for RIDDOR states the following.  

Failure in this context refers to components which suffer mechanical breakdown during the normal operation of the lifting equipment, as opposed to accidental or deliberate damage.

For me, accidental damage to a hoist rope would be something like the rope being run over by a vehicle or getting entangled in machinery, while it wasn't in use.

If the damage happens when you are using the hoist rope for its intended purpose (lifting a load) then for me that is damage in normal use.  It doesn't matter that the particular reason you happen to be lifting a load at the time is some urgent operational requirement that may not have been foreseen.  

In many businesses, carrying out urgent operational requirements that haven't been foreseen is standard operating procedure ...

I would regard this as RIDDOR reportable as a failure under normal lifting operations

Reportable.

Incidents involving cranes must be reported irrespective of the nature of the work being done, and reports must not be restricted to those involving lifting and lowering. For example, a collapse or overturning when a machine is being used for demolition activities must be included.

Having a situation/process or procedure where excessive material can accumulate taking load weight to or beyond any safe capacity indicates mutiple near misses may have occurred prior to this failure without lessons being learned and control measures put in place.

Whilst it may be expensive in down time and problematic to re-start the line occassionally stopping activity to work methodically to resolve the abnormal means corners are not cut and lives put in danger

Quote taken from HSE

'It does not cover the failure of ancillary equipment, such as electric operating buttons or radius indicators, or failures of lifting accessories, such as chains and slings.'

Are chains load-bearing, similar to the rope used on this ocassion? Yes.

Semantics I guess but in HSE own words - not RIDDOR reportable.

Originally Posted by: PDarlow

Are chains load-bearing, similar to the rope used on this ocassion? Yes.

Err.. no they are not.

The OP specifically described the hoist rope - this is the item that as it travels (generally wound on to and off a drum) raises & lowers the load and as such is load bearing. No rope, nothing moves.

https://www.craneskit.com/crane-operation-precautions.html random internet image

Not to be confused with the travel rope of a boom crane or as you have rope slings.