Moving these types of high-weight lifts is not only muscle and crane size, but it also involves judgment, communication, and the cool head. If you work in an area of hoists, skates, and tight aisles in factories, you know the problem is long before the lift is made. Check here to learn more about rigger.
Here is a short list of those finer skills that solve problems of safety, efficiency and timely performance.
Beyond Strength: The Mental Side of Rigging
Before making a move, you make a plan. The reading of the ground, plotting of routes of travel, and the visualizing of load characteristics are mental exercises which are as important as any tool or piece of equipment stored in the gang box. You see the small details: The cracks in the concrete, the obstructions above, and the reaction of a slight tilt on the center of gravity.
In this state of mind: Observe, Predict, Validate, you change an element of uncertainty into an instrument of which the operator of the lift is master. You also mentally inventory the capacities and limitations of the devices employed, so that every shackle, sling, and spreader bar has its place to fill on arrival at the scene of operations of the cribbing in motion.
Problem-Solving Under Pressure
Even the best planned job receives unwelcome real-life shocks: a lift truck is blocking the out, a last-minute change in anchorage points, or a slippery rain, not forecast. Great equipment riggers treat pressure as another tool on the job—it should be utilized to focus their action, not hurry it. When seconds count, a reliance on the habitual factors of keeping the mind clear and actions deliberate is the foundation of performance.
- You diagnose the issue quickly: better to know what the constraint is, re-establish the goal and agree on the next safe action.
- You’re checking assumptions against conditions: line angles, sling lengths, headroom, due to zig-zagging between triangles than supposition.
- You’re revising plans as required, batching things into contingencies by referring to your lift planning notes so that everyone is made aware of Plan B and Plan C.
Teamwork and Communication in Rigging
It is not possible for a single man to move a mill or a press. Clearness is more desired than loudness, whether signals are given by voice or signaling. Before the first pick is made there is a clear understanding of what each recipe will be by the men engaged in making the pick, and the rank of the different riggers, signaler, spotters, etc., is well defined. The dignity of stopping rests in the authority of the man who is empowered to do so.
Short toolbox talks are taken, job hazard analyses and equipment phrases are followed, so that a round peg will go through the round hole. Each time after the pick of either machine is made, the good crews debrief themselves on what they did and what they could have done better, so that the next pick will be made quicker with no short cuts.
Why Experience Beats Guesswork
Experience is the quiet teacher that saves time through good jobs and renewed work. It tells you when it is desirable to jack-and-slide rather than lift; when it required to travel positively instead of continually thinking “go”, also when to call in matting, due to the floor lying. These things come through practice, across installations and outings through the course of machine-moving and complete plant moves as well.
Before tackles hit the shackles the experienced hands do much else other than “just look.” They develop a rhythm which can be repeated:
- The site is read as though one is reading a map; its traffic patterns, its pinch points, its overhead risk, for the load can safely be parked.
- The method is chosen which relates to conditions rather than to ego, i.e. gantry, toe-on-jacks, hybrid moves; after which, one presents gear in an order applying it is to be worked.
- The path is checked: how many corners, how many slopes, how many thresholds, and what floor capacity concerned; taglines and spotters placed where there is a likelihood of their continuous usefulness.
Continuous Learning in the Rigging Trade
Tools are updated, standards change, and new controls make difficult lifts easy. Keeping current means getting training on upgraded equipment, reading manufacturers’ bulletins, and sharing the lessons learned after each job. Cross-learning, or learning from trade to trade, as riggers do from millwrights, electricians, and operators sharpens the judgement too, for the best riggers know and understand the machine they are working with, as well as the slings which operate it. Ratings, peer reviews, and mentoring keep skills up to date and crew safety improved.
Check out https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/01/f6/HoistingRigging_Fundamentals.pdf for more learning.
In a necessity where preciseness implies consequence, learning is not optional, it is part of the trade. Keeping lift logs, gear inspections and load charts, gives you a past but of what the whole shop can rely on.