Lack of maintenance on hoists and cranes is commonplace,
resulting in potential loss of production and risk of injury to
personnel. Here,Ray Fletcher, director of the Crane and
Hoist division at Street Crane Express (SCX) looks at how a
planned preventative maintenance programme can ensure
compliance with legislation as well as safer facilities

Ensuring the efficiency of modern
production facilities is critical in
today’s competitive marketplace.

Combined with the tightening of legislation
that now makes it a legal requirement to
have street cranes regularly maintained many
production facilities are looking at the
benefits of opting for a planned preventative
maintenance programme.

The regulations also state that all overhead
lifting equipment must pass a statutory
examination every year in order to be legally
safe for use. Failure to comply with this can
result in serious consequences for both the
organisation and their responsible persons.

Street Cranexpress offers both Statutory
Examination & Preventative Maintenance
Schedules, which can be tailored to the
clients requirements. The client will have the
benefit that these schedules are carried out
with highly trained engineers and in total
compliance with legislation.

Even though outsourcing planned
preventative maintenance of overhead crane
equipment is increasing, some plant
managers prefer to carry out the
maintenance themselves. This is acceptable
as long as it is done correctly and in
accordance with the manufacturers
recommendations.

However, with the stricter legislation,
outsourcing planned preventative
maintenance is often the only option for
plant and facility managers; choosing the
right partner can reduce the risk for your
business. For example, research has shown
that lack of maintenance on hoists and
cranes is commonplace, resulting in potential
loss of production and worse still, the risk of
injury to personnel. Over the last few years
we have therefore seen a significant increase
in interest for our planned preventative
maintenance programme, especially as many
customers don’t have the expertise or
resources to carry out in-house maintenance
duties or prefer to do what they do best,
which is running their business.

Recent changes in the market have
encouraged many customers to look at the
way they carry out planned maintenance.

The result has been an increase in enquiries
for these types of maintenance contracts.We
have responded by developing a new, valueadded
Condition Monitoring service. This
lets customers select between three different
service packages, covering everything from
routine inspection to detailed condition
monitoring for higher duty applications.

As customers now realise that they have a
legal obligation to carry out regular and
documented maintenance, it is proving a
huge benefit when they can source a
maintenance package that exactly suites their
needs. For us, that means having engineers
based strategically around the country who
can provide a localised and therefore more
responsive service – an overriding
requirement from customers is to minimise
the downtime of equipment and having local
resources is crucial to achieve this.

Latest advances in the maintenance of
crane and hoist equipment are Digital Pens,
which are carried by all our engineers and
allow site notes, drawings, calculations and
test sheets to be processed immediately.

Fitted with a special camera, the pens’ image
processing and built in Bluetooth
communication devices allow site notes to be
transformed into digital media and
immediately sent back to the office, usually
while the engineer is still on site. By choosing
a maintenance partner that can provide this
type of technology, customers can ensure
that they have minimum downtown while
making sure that everything is properly
logged and recorded. Our links with sister
company Street Crane means customers have
access to a wide range of off-the-shelf hoists
and components that can be installed and
serviced by our engineers nationally.

There is a very clear responsibility on
employers and managers to safeguard their
workers and to maximise the productivity of
overhead lifting equipment. A preventative
maintenance schedule for cranes and hoists
will ensure that lifting equipment is working
efficiently and effectively, increase the
serviceable life span of the equipment, and
improve site safety and productivity.