Truck mounted crane scope - under what does it fall?

Years ago, the steering committee for LMI’s at ECSA submitted a proposed list of categories of lifting machines numbering around 100 items. The debate went to the CRC and concluded with the identified 18 main categories.

Amongst these were mobile cranes which needed a SANS standard to identify the differences in the types of cranes which needed different requirements when testing and the variety of these mobile cranes. Eg. Mobile rough terrain cranes, mobile all-terrain cranes, mobile all-terrain lattice boom cranes and all models of crawler cranes. Plus others like “Loader cranes” and “Boom trucks“ are also known as TMC’s. All these are mobile cranes that can be found in the identified categories for the operators’ licences defined in the National Code of Practice. The criteria in both cases were quite different in the execution of the work and goals. The final list was hotly debated and after it was grouped indicating the 18 main categories, it was accepted by the LMI steering committee at ECSA. Eventually, this was published in 2013 and it then became an official ECSA document. What most current ECSA assessors don’t know is that the wording of the definitions was accepted as principal requirements. Recently the groups have not recognised and respected these categories which have for instance fuelled a debate about the difference between specific lifting machines like “Loader cranes” versus “mobile cranes”. Loader cranes were called TMC’s which was unfortunate because

South Africa is a participating member of the ISO group and one of the objectives has always been to standardise the industries descriptions word wide.

Some interesting facts follow:

• ECSA wanted every LMI to be registered for everything. Because of the vast variety of types of lifting machines and future designs, it was decided that for practical intents and purposes, the LMI’s would have to be specially trained for the individual categories. • This caused a tremendous number of complications, but we had to accept this ruling. • Days the ECSA assessors are now trying to scrape the category groups because they think nobody considered this variety. • So, we have people who are convincing the assessors to register specific machines which are confusing some of the people. They are not sticking to the category groupings which have been decided on. • The next thing is that we will have a million categories as technology develops innovations. These categories will be covered in the already identified categories which cover all engineering disciplines like; mechanical, electrical, electronic, pneumatic, hydraulic, Principals. • Therefore, if you find an individual with an awfully specific defined category, then they have usually achieved this by convincing the assessors that they are unique. This is done to protect their specific LMI and LME market. • In most cases, we can all see this happening, and the assessors are giving in to this because they have little knowledge of the wide spectrum of engineering applied in industry today. • It is said that this happens because we set the system up to accommodate these grouped categories. • If this is not stopped, we are going to have a million categories because the general knowledge of the assessors and moderators is limited. • If you observe our WhatsApp groups, you will see that an LMI will ask a question because he does not know enough about the specific discipline and others on the group educate him. When they have answered his dilemma and educated the person, they then remark that the customer must be educated. The problem is, yes, the LMI should educate the client, but the LMI is not educated in his specific category. Therefore, I am a firm believer in education before registration, and especially for the assessors.

LMI Academy,

+27 (0) 11 475 5876, +27 (0) 82 554 5141, ken@lmi-academy.co.za, www.lmi-academy.co.za