A crane is a necessary piece of equipment on many construction or maintenance projects. If it's not often a part of your core machinery, you might need to hire additional personnel to make sure it's operated safely.
Because it's such a complex, dangerous piece of equipment, you need to make sure you have all the people available to use the crane properly, and they must all have the training needed to do their particular job.
Supervisor
This is the person in charge of overseeing all aspects of crane operation and safety, perhaps appointing other members of the crane team. You may already have a person on your team who can fulfil this role, but it involves more than standard supervisory duties.
Not only it is necessary for your crane supervisor to have a deep understanding of general site practices, they should also be an experienced crane operator with extensive familiarity of the specific issues crane use entails.
Operator or operators
Aside from the actual operation of cranes, this person should also be responsible for carrying out pre-use and routine checks. It's up to them to use cranes safely and leave them in a suitable state, cooperating with other team members and working under the guidance of your supervisor.
Coordinator
The crane coordinator is the one responsible for ensuring there are no collisions between cranes and other equipment or each other, planning their movements before work begins. They should also be on hand to ensure movements are carried out as planned and to monitor any other potential problems.
Your crane coordinator could be someone who also has other tasks onsite, as long as they're available when needed.
Erectors
It's vital that anyone tasked with assembling crane equipment is qualified to do so. As you might imagine, it's not only a potentially hazardous process putting together the crane to begin with, but it must be done so to the best possible standards to ensure safe operation throughout the project.
Because it will probably be necessary to operate the crane while assembling it, an erector should have at least some amount of operator training.
Slinger/signaller
By using a standardised set of hand signals, these people keep the site safe by directing all kinds of machinery and vehicles. Because of their size, cranes are one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment on most sites, so a slinger or signaller is even more important.
Arguably one of the most important people where a crane is operating, the slinger/signaller should be given the authority to suspend work if conditions make vision difficult.
