The Notice of Project
Section 14.73.3 requires a written notice to WorkSafeBC at least 2 weeks before the work starts — and not just for erecting. Erecting, climbing, repositioning and dismantling each count as a crane activity, so a job with four climbs in it has more than one notice due. Work that cannot wait because there is an immediate risk of injury or damage may begin as soon as the Board has been notified, with the written notice following. The same information has to be posted at the workplace before the work starts, and stay posted while it is going on.
Keep the NOP number — a general contractor or an officer will ask for it, and "we filed one" is not an answer.
What sits alongside it
- The engineered foundation certificate. Section 14.74 requires the foundation to be certified by a professional engineer, and the bearing capacity of the ground under it to be determined by a professional engineer. In practice the engineer or their designate attends before the pour, because nobody certifies a foundation they never saw. This one holds jobs up more than any other.
- A signed erection plan for that crane on that site, not a generic one.
- The pre-job meeting, held with everybody who will be on site for the lift, and minuted with who attended.
- The trucking and delivery plan, and the exclusion zone around the lift.
- The mobile crane doing the erecting, with its own paperwork current.
- Power lines — checked, with the clearances confirmed before anything is lifted.
- The forecast. The wind limit for erecting is far lower than the wind limit for working, and it is the number people get wrong. Our machines lift at a lower limit when being erected, climbed or dismantled than when they are in service.
Subcontracting the lift does not move any of this. If you hire a crew to erect your crane, their method and their people are theirs — but the condition of the machine, its records, and the 2 checks that fall due after they drive away remain yours as the crane owner.
What a general contractor will ask you for
In roughly this order: the crane's current annual inspection, the operational test, the foundation certificate, the NOP number, the erection plan, and proof of insurance. If you can send those from a phone the same day, you look like a different company from the one who says they will dig it out.
Related guides
- Tower crane wind limits — working, erecting and out of service are three different numbers.
- Tower crane records you have to keep — what to hold per machine, and what a contractor asks for first.
- All of our tower crane guides — inspection, maintenance and paperwork in British Columbia.