A
candidate maneuvers the test load through the NCCCO’s service truck
crane operator practical exam in Houston in 2013.Photo: NCCCO
“I spoke to the directorate last week [early October] and they are
still confident they can get this final rule out before then,” Graham
Brent said in a phone interview in mid October.
“I’ll only say they’ve been pretty confident before and they haven’t managed to meet the deadline,” Brent added.
In fact, the day before the previous deadline of Nov. 10, 2017, OSHA
published a notice on the Federal Register that confirmed a
long-anticipated extension.
The operator certification requirement was included in an update to
OSHA standard for cranes and derricks in construction — called 29 CFR
Part 1926 — published in 2010. Most of the provisions went into effect
soon after, Brent said.
Some exclusions apply
The proposed rule excludes cranes of 2,000 pounds capacity or less.
“This standard applies to power-operated equipment, when used in
construction, that can hoist, lower and horizontally move a suspended
load,” the proposed regulations say. They specifically include
“service/mechanic trucks with a hoisting device” but also exclude a
“mechanic’s truck with a hoisting device when used in activities related
to equipment maintenance and repair.”
Since service trucks are used primarily for repairing and maintaining
equipment, the certification requirement usually doesn’t apply.
However, Brent outlined a scenario where a service truck operator goes
to a jobsite expecting to work on an engine and someone else on the site
notices the crane and asks the operator to lift some pipe.
“Of course the guy is going to do that,” Brent said. “And that’s
construction. So as an employer you want to be completely covered 100
percent of the time. And the way to do that is to have them certified.”
Another grey area is that service truck cranes are also used to hoist
propane tanks. The wrinkle is that when a crane merely swaps an empty
tank with a full one, that’s considered maintenance. But when a crane
installs a propane tank for the first time, that’s regarded as
construction.
Propane group seeks exemption
The National Propane Gas Association has called for OSHA to exempt
truck-mounted crane delivering propane tanks from the regulations and
asked for it to delay the Nov. 10, 2018 deadline. “This certification
will cost the industry an estimated $151 million every five years,” said
a posting on the association website.
The association even threatened to press the case to President Trump.
“With the compliance deadline coming up in November, let’s tell The
White House how much this rule impacts our industry so they will
intervene with OSHA on our industry’s behalf.”
The NCCCO, in a July 5, 2018 letter to Loren Sweatt, the deputy
assistant secretary of labor at OSHA, said it would “reluctantly
support” another six month extension to the rule-making process. “We
said, frankly, no because it’s taken us so long to get here that we
think six months is probably not going to make a whole of difference,”
Brent said.
He added that the delay “absolutely has maintained the risk because
certification is a risk mitigator.” What’s driving the call for
certification is the marketplace, he said, noting that 16 states already
have their own crane operator certification requirements and that many
job postings for crane operators require certifications.
“So if you’re a crane operator it’s in your own interest frankly to get certified,” Brent said.
The new rule will cover states and territories lacking crane
certification requirements and create a “federal floor” that state
regulations must meet at a minimum.
1,000 service truck certifications
About five years ago, the service truck industry formed a committee
of manufacturers, dealers, users, trainers and others to work with the
NCCCO to develop a certification for service truck crane operators. In
its first year, the service truck program only certified about 75
operators. But the program has picked up steam and at last count had
certified about 1,000 service truck operators, Brent said.
(Another certification body, Crane Institute Certification, has also
launched a certification program for service truck crane operators.)
Since the last deadline extension on the regulations, OSHA has
proposed removing a provision that required different levels of
certification based on lifting capacity, although testing agencies can
still do so. That’s a move the NCCCO supports.
OSHA also considered but declined to include an exemption for
operators of cranes in the 5,000 to 35,000 pound capacity range. The
NCCCO supports that move as well.
“What they said was the same risks are present regardless of the
capacity,” Brent said, although he was at a loss to explain why that
proposal didn’t also cover cranes from 2,000 to 5,000 pounds capacity.
One area where the NCCCO disagrees with OSHA is a proposal that trainers not be required to be certified operators.
In its response, the NCCCO said that “while certification may not be
an appropriate ‘sole’ crit
erion or a sufficient indication of competence
as a trainer, it should be regarded as an appropriately necessary
condition of establishing such competence and ensuring a ‘baseline’ of
knowledge and skills.”
Numbers hard to estimate
Brent said the NCCCO has currently certified about 100,000 crane
operators, which he “conservatively” estimated is 80 percent of all the
certified operators. But how many others are still to be certified,
“frankly, nobody knows,” he said.
“We won’t really know before the whole thing shakes out,” he added.
“It’s obviously more than 100,000. Is it 200,000? Probably not actually.
We’ve been doing this for 23 years and we’ve been talking about it now
as a federal rule for at least 15. We’ve had deadlines come and go but
these deadlines have had the effect of focusing people’s attention and
getting trained and certified. So we’ve had spurts along the way. I’ve
got to think, though, we’re it’s only half way there.”
The rules themselves might even lead to companies having fewer crane
operators because firms might decide to reduce the cost of certification
and only assign specific people to operate the cranes and assign others
who formerly did some crane operating to other duties. Indeed, he cited
the example of an unnamed petrochemical company that he recalled doing
just that.
“That’s why it’s completely impossible to estimate because as soon as
you can get an accurate number right this minute, they will change or
probably reduce as a result of the mandatory requirement coming in,”
Brent said.
—
Keith Norbury
Source: Service Truck Magazine
November 19, 2018
