The deadline for certifying U.S. crane operators — including operators of service truck cranes when used in construction — has officially been extended until Nov. 10, 2018.
The federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration published a rule in the Federal Register on Nov. 9 that confirmed the long-expected extension.
“OSHA is also extending its employer duty to ensure that crane operators are competent to operate a crane safely for the same one-year period,” the summary of the rule says.
OSHA extended the deadline just a day before the rule was to come into effect, the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators noted in a news release.
The extension of the deadline will give OSHA time to work on addressing a pair of issues that have arisen since the rule was first published in 2010, the NCCCO news release said. Those are “whether operators need to be certified by type and capacity, or just by type; and whether certification is sufficient by itself to deem an operator qualified to operate a crane.”
The NCCCO “reluctantly” supported the additional delay — the deadline had already been extended twice — because changes to the rule “were critically important to the effectiveness of the certification requirement,” according to NCCCO CEO Graham Brent.
The new standard, known as 1926.1400, is aimed primarily at large construction. But the rule also captures “service/mechanics trucks with a hoisting device” of 2,000 pounds capacity or more when such a crane is used in construction. An exception is when the crane is “used in activities related to equipment maintenance and repair.” That, of course, is the primary use of service truck cranes.
As Joel Oliva, the NCCCO’s director of operators and program development, earlier told Service Truck Magazine, “the vast majority of service trucks are excluded from the rule.”