It is essential for the safety of all personnel involved with lifting operations that all lifting equipment being used at the site is controlled, suitably rated for the task, certified for use, and suitable for its intended application.
A competent person must check for any defects before use. We must also consider the risk of a piece of lifting equipment failing under load, resulting in a falling or swinging load. The consequences of such an incident occurring may lead to injury or contribute to a Major Accident Hazard.
Many of the activities are carried out close to or above live plant. So think:
- Am I adequately controlling and managing the use of lifting equipment?
- What are the inherent dangers of using lifting equipment on your site?
FEATURED RESOURCES
NEW RESOURCE: Hands-Free Operations
The fourth subtopic of this quarter’s safety theme, Safe Lifting Operations and Preventing Falling Objects focuses on Lifting Equipment and Hands-free Tools. To coincide with this subtopic, a short information sheet has been produced that covers hands-free operations, the importance of task specific risk assessments and designated step back areas.
Download the information sheet and share with colleagues across your organisation.

Lifting Equipment and Hands-Free Tools Podcast
Ian Michael Bond, lifting supervisor with Awilco Drilling delivers a podcast on hands-free tools, part of the fourth subtopic of the 2021 Q2 safety theme, Safe Lifting Operations and Preventing Falling Objects. In the podcast Ian Michael highlights the role that hands-free lifting plays in safe lifting operations and acknowledges that every asset faces different challenges in their lifting operations. He discusses the training and education programme that Awilco Drilling developed to introduce hands-free lifting to its lifting teams and mentions that they trialled a number of different hands-free tools to find those that met the company’s needs.
Our thanks to Awilco Drilling for this contribution.