Race Night Appliction Form

The exemption of mobile cranes from requiring roadworthiness tests is under scrutiny after a mother and her two daughters were killed in a car crash caused by oil on the road that had leaked from a crane.

Whether cranes are two-axle 30-tonners or nine-axle 1,000-tonne capacity monsters, there is no legal requirement in the UK for them to have any kind of roadworthiness inspection or MoT check. Even the smallest motor car must be independently certified as roadworthy every year once it reaches three yeasr old. There is no such requirement for mobile cranes even if they are 20 or 30 years old.

Ann Copeland, 45, and her daughters Ciara, 7, and Niamh, 10, from Johnshaven, died after their car skidded on the A92 in Aberdeenshire in January 2008.

At the fatal accident inquiry last week Sheriff Kenneth Stewart said that her car had most likely skidded on hydraulic oil that had leaked from a crane onto the road.

He recommended that MoTs for mobile cranes now become a legal requirement.

Widower Barry Copeland has written to the Health & Safety Executive asking what action it plans to take in the light of the inquiry findings. The HSE said that it would give the matter “careful consideration”.

Crane manufacturer Manitowoc is working with electronics specialist Trimble to develop technology to exploit GPS technology improve crane productivity.

Above: Potain cranes

Trimble and Manitowoc say that they intend to develop solutions that will transform the way in which crane operations and information are managed on a construction site.

The goal is to produce a system that provides “real time, centimetre-level positioning data for multiple cranes working on a construction site”. Cranes on site would all be ‘connected’, with the working area and forbidden zones of each one programmed in.

The companies said that they also expect to develop an "intelligent environment" database for their solutions capable of receiving constant updates of data from building information modelling (BIM) tools and other site sensors working in tandem.

In their vision, crane operations would shut down automatically if they detected any unplanned work activity on site.

A wireless local area network (WLAN) will share the crane position information across the construction site, providing each crane operator, the lift scheduler, and even the back office instant status against the BIM plan.

Manitowoc produces Potain-branded tower cranes and Grove-branded telescopic boom mobile cranes as well as Manitowoc-branded lattice boom crawler cranes.

"Trimble is already using much the same technology to deliver significant productivity improvements to the construction machine control market," said John Cameron, general manager of Trimble's Integrated Technologies Division. "By partnering with the Manitowoc Cranes, a lifting industry leader, we expect to co-develop solutions capable of lifting and delivering materials on the construction site similar to a contract manufacturer who uses a pick-and-place machine to build an electronic circuit board. Our goal is add crane productivity as another key component of the connected site."