OSHA’s New Crane Regulations

Confused about OSHA’s proposed crane regulations change to mobile crane operator certification requirements?

 OSHA’s proposed changes at a glance: First and foremost, the change in law has been postponed—at least until November 2017 (see OSHA’s official bulletin below). Second, it concerns cranes and derricks in construction only. Third, the crane operator certification is only comprised of a written exam and a practical exam which prove competency. It does not mean operators do not have to be trained. Outside of the additional exams, according to OSHA, the employer still has the responsibility to see that his crane operators have received mobile crane training specific to the job and the type of crane they will be operating. And if a mobile crane operator is observed operating a mobile crane in an unsafe manner, involved in a near miss or accident, or assigned to operate a different type of crane or if work conditions have changed significantly, they will still need refresher training.

I received boom truck training at a different job. Do I need to be trained again by my new employer? Is my boom truck training portable? And what about the NCCCO certification?

This is a common question, especially among laborers-for-hire who may sub out from job to job. Technically, it is your current employer who is responsible for saying whether or not you have been trained specifically for the type of mobile crane and job.

Having said that, OSHA is considering enacting a law that would require every mobile crane operator to pass a set of additional mobile crane exams before being considered mobile crane certified. For now, this requirement has been postponed until November at 2107, and maybe longer. There are some organizations that still offer these written and practical exams and, yes, if you pass them, they are portable, meaning they are recognized across the country. It is wise to work toward passing these exams now, rather than waiting until OSHA makes the law official. It will, eventually, become law. However, the new crane regulations simply prove you were competent enough to have passed the exam.

As noted, it is still the responsibility of your employer to see you receive training. Many employers may simply accept your card, but if you bring a boom truck certificate or wallet card to your new employer, they can still require you to take their own training class. This is because if an accident were to occur they would still need to prove training. Just telling OSHA that and operator had a mobile crane certification card will not suffice, nor will it undo the accident.

Can you explain mobile crane certification? Who can train, evaluate, and certify operators?

This, above all, causes a lot of confusion. Bottom line, OSHA states that employers are responsible to train their employees. Generally speaking, there are three ways they can do this:

• Train employees in-house with their own program
• Hire a 3^rd party to train the employees (on-site or off-site)
• Use another company’s materials or online classes to train employees

In terms of using a 3^rd part of a safety training companies materials (like our boom truck training kits on CD or our boom truck online training class) OSHA does not recognize one company over another. They simply state that ‘training needs to occur’ and ‘here are the things a mobile crane operator should be trained on.

When we do live training or offer boom truck training online, people often assume we are the ones certifying the trainees. This is not true for any training company. We are simply assisting the employer by providing live boom truck training or the boom truck training materials needed to help them boom truck certify their employees.

Regarding OSHA’s proposed change to crane operator certification in construction, when this law goes into effect, there will be certain organizations that have been approved for the sole purpose of proctoring these exams.  As mentioned earlier, though, this OSHA law has been delayed at least until November 2017, and even if the law passes, crane operators in construction will still need to receive traditional operator safety training outside of the additional exams.

OSHA Bulletin: Cranes and Derricks in Construction – Crane Operator Certification:

Here is a link to the official announcement regarding the extension of this rule:

http://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOL/bulletins/d19d04

And here is the bulletin itself:

OSHA extends alignment date for crane operator certification requirements

United States Department of Labor sent this bulletin at 09/25/2014 02:34 PM EDT