The impending statutory tower crane register may only apply to “assisted-erected” tower cranes to ensure it can be established quickly enough to meet its April 2010 deadline.
Recommendations made by the Health and Safety Executive’s business unit and submitted to the regulator’s board yesterday also suggested the register should be directly available to the public, bypassing the HSE, and should be restricted vehicles used in construction sector alone.
Laurence Golob, from the HSE’s business involvement unit, estimated there were about 1000 assisted-erectors – where parts are brought to the site and the crane is assembled in situ – and 500 to 700 self-erectors – which are a single unit that “unfolds” to form a crane – available for use on construction sites in the UK.
But he said opening the register up to both types from day one would increase complexity and put the HSE in a position where it could “risk missing the April 2010 deadline”.
He said: “There is a possibility that some stakeholders would see both types as ‘tower cranes’ and might seek reassurance in either case - which argues for including both types in the register.
“[But] we would recommend that the register is restricted to assisted-erected tower cranes.”
The series of high profile collapses in recent years all involved assisted-erected cranes.
Dr Golob suggested the HSE would be able to reconsider including self-erected tower cranes once the register had been successfully operated for a period of time.
He yesterday asked the board to provide “a steer” on the scope, degree of public access and the regulatory route to the establishment of the proposed statutory register.
The board decided at its January meeting that it would develop a register, which the Government later revealed would be in place by April 2010.
Dr Golob said that to meet the “tight timetable this imposes” a draft consultation document would need to be drawn up for the board’s June meeting, along with papers on the regulatory impact.
