Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started now. Hi everyone, welcome to Installation and Rigging Beyond the Basics, hosted by Inland Marine Underwriters Association. I'm Lillian Colson, and I'm pleased to introduce today's class featuring Jason Baynard, Keith Adolph, and Ty Silva. Thank you to our instructors for your commitment to provide the content and share your expertise during today's class. And many thanks to my colleagues, Eileen and Ali Monreale, for all they do to coordinate our education with our instructors, as well as behind the scenes to ensure the success of IMUA education. Thanks also to you, our attendees. We have 198 attendees registered for the class today, and we look forward to an informative and dynamic class today. IMUA is utilizing GoToTraining for this class. While attendees will be muted for the class, we encourage you to use the inclusive chat. And each instructor will take time at the end of their presentations today to address any questions that are in the chat. So you'll just use that chat, you'll type in your question and click submit. And like I said, they'll designate a time at the end of each session, each presenter to address those questions. We'll have a final Q&A at the end of the whole class today, where you can raise your hand and open your mic to ask a question, or you can continue to use the chat. Just a quick, a few little tips to review before we get started. There's a handout section, it's called materials, and there you'll find the handouts, which would include the PDF of the slide presentation for today's class, the fillable CE form, if you require CE credits, and the IMUA policy statements. To reference one of those statements, please refrain from entering into any discussions on matters affecting rates or conditions of insurance contracts. To help reduce strain on your local network, we suggest you close all unnecessary browsers and internet-reliant programs. If you entered today's class using the app, you'll find your attendee control panel will default, I'm sorry, will minimize by default. At any point, you can see the orange arrow icon, simply click it, right-click it, and then uncheck the auto-hide option to expand your control panel again. If you entered on the web browser, you'll see the control panel at all times. As I mentioned before, there's a PDF of the slide presentation in the materials section in your control panel, so you'll just scroll down to materials, click on it, and then you'll find the handout of the PDF. I'm pleased to share that today's class is approved for three CE credits in New York, New Jersey, and Texas. I'm sorry, that's in Georgia, New York, or Texas, Georgia, New York, or Texas, and only those three states. Please go ahead, click on the fillable CE form, then you're going to fill it out, and then save it, and then submit it to Allie Monreale, and her information is at the bottom of the form. The first code today is 0125, that's 0125. I'll share the second code with you at the end of the class today. Our instructors will announce two 10-minute breaks today, one at around 150 p.m. Eastern Time, and one at around 250 p.m. Eastern Time today. The class will conclude at 4 p.m. Eastern Time today. To encourage your participation today, we will have a most engaged attendee, or best question that I'll ask the instructors to select someone at the end of the class today. We'll also have one seminar trivia question at the end of the class today, and the winners of each of those will receive a $25 Amazon gift card. Now, without further delay, I'd like to introduce today's instructors. First up, we have Jason Baynard, who is a member of three IMUA committees, IMUA's Southeast Region, thank you, IMUA's Transportation Committee, and IMUA's Construction Committee. Jason is an AVP of Underwriting at MBIS, and he's a graduate of Clark Atlanta University. He began his insurance career as an underwriter trainee at Chubb in Atlanta. He's originally from Silver Spring, Maryland, but has spent his professional career working in the Midwest and Southeast with a focus on construction, energy, and transportation. As I mentioned to you earlier, he's a valuable member of three IMUA committees. He's contributed to White Papers and also the direction of education content for IMUA. He's a past IMUA annual meeting presenter, a webinar presenter, a regional committee seminar presenter, and an instructor. Our next presenter is Tyrone Silva. Ty serves as AVP of Risk Management at NBIS with his background in construction, contract management, commercial claims, adjusting, and loss control inspections. Ty lends his expertise to producers and insurers regarding holistic risk mitigation contracted risk transfer, and claims management. Prior to his assistant program manager role, which we had before he became AVP, Tyrone was responsible for working with insurers and reviewing their service contracts and overall operations to improve their risk profile. And Ty is a past Southeast seminar presenter as well. And after that, we have Keith Adolf. And Keith is having his IMUA instructor debut, and he is AVP of Risk Management at NBIS. Keith has 27 years of cranes and rigging experience from operating assembly, disassembly, safety training, maintenance, and committee memberships. He's a proud member of a number of committees and organizations, including the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 825, ASME B35 committee member, and a certification of crane operators, certified operators since 1999. We are thrilled to have these three subject matter experts with us today. And now I'll turn it over to Jason. Let's give him a warm welcome. All right, guys. Had my light shut off right when you finished up, Lillian, so that was perfect. Hey, thank you for everyone for taking the time to come out and spending some time with us. We were really excited when we were proposed with the opportunity to come back and speak a little bit on riggers liability a little deeper. This is something that we do a lot up here at NBIS. And I know that a lot of you all on the call are all from a variety of different carrier partners that are represented through IMUA, as well as maybe some brokers and claims folks as well. But with that said, really wanted to just take a minute to kind of set up what this time is going to look like today. You know, again, given that we do have a wide variety of skill levels on this call, we are going to kind of start with just some macro forms coverage discussion. We're going to use the AAIS forms as kind of the basis of our discussion, just to kind of tee up the variety of coverage forms that can be applicable for riggers liability job or exposure, as we see that come across our desk from an underwriting standpoint. We'll then subsequently transition to what does a sample contract look like? How do we, what do we look for within a contract that maybe triggers, does this really match up with the application? Are we offering the right coverages? Are we headed down the right path from a desk underwriting standpoint? And then really excited to get some insight from Keith, who will be able to kind of go into what is it like in the field? You know, once we get done issuing said endorsement or binder with the riggers coverage, what does that really look like in real life for the actual guys out in the field doing the work? And then Ty is going to kind of bring that home with just some potential outcomes. You know, we'll go over some near misses, as well as some outcomes that aren't necessarily what we desire from the underwriting desk. So the real end goal here is to just take you guys just kind of on a journey of what it looks like from when the submission comes through our desk and kind of how it progresses on, out into the real world where things really matter. And so again, just kind of recapping these modules, at the end of each module, guys, we will open it up for questions. We do look forward to some feedback and some dialogue. Again, we don't want this to be too one way. We want, we really want to have some conversation here. So look forward to getting some questions from you guys. So again, just to kind of kick off the forms and key underwriting concerns, which I'll primarily lead this part of the discussion, we are going to use the AAIS coverage forms as the basis for this discussion, recognizing that there's a plethora of proprietary inland marine coverage forms, and more specifically, riggers coverage forms or installation forms for whatever carriers you guys may represent. But again, using the AAIS is just kind of a fundamental basis of coverage forms for the purpose of this conversation. As always, any good underwriters, know your forms, know your forms, know your forms. So let's, let's go ahead and get started. So here's kind of a, some blanket, again, basic definitions of what is riggers liability. And essentially, it's just going to be the liability arising out of the movement of property that belongs to others. You know, oftentimes, especially in the, in the crane and rigging space, we always, a common example is the HVAC unit on top of the building, right, whether it's a new build or if it's just replacing an existing unit, there's, there's an associated riggers liability exposure that I think most people are pretty familiar with if you live in any sort of urban area with any high rise structures. Conversely, there's also the installation floater, and that's going to cover personal property fabricated or erected by a contractor. And that one's a little different than obviously your riggers liability form. But that is going to cover property up until the final work is complete or the installation of said item is finally installed and part of a real and personal property exposure. Okay, so the first form that we're going to kind of go over is the AIS 7150-0608, which is your standard riggers coverage form. Some of the things that all three of these forms that are going to, we're going to touch upon, they're all care, custody, and control forms. Sometimes you'll hear the term bailees thrown around when it comes to the care, custody, and control aspects of each of these forms that we'll go over, the riggers installation and riggers legal liability, recognizing that they all address care, custody, and control. They're all going to have a temporary storage and transit component built into each form to suit any sort of normal rigging job. And each one can kind of be used interchangeably, just kind of depending on some of the nuance of each one of the coverages that your specific insurer may need. Some of the things that are unique to the riggers coverage form is going to be that there's no contractual trigger. So once you guys go ahead and release this form or bind this, you know, for any particular opportunity, there's not going to be any sort of contractual cover in order for this form to respond. In addition, there is no loss of use, which is a, it can be an ancillary coverage, which again, some of you may have built into your proprietary coverage forms. But within the AAIS coverage form, there is no loss of use built into the riggers coverage form. There is defense cost language. So if you do get caught in a liability situation, this form can respond from a defense standpoint. And this form also does not have any sort of limitation when it comes to time for temporary storage provisions. Keeping in mind that that could look like our insured having something drop shipped to their yard, stored until the job is ready, our insured will then transit said item, could be again, a HVAC unit is a very common example, onto a flatbed taken to a job site for final erection. So no time limitation there. And again, these all vary depending on the actual carriers that you guys represent. Oftentimes, within the AAIS form, there are sublimits for temporary storage limits. Oftentimes, these can be raised either by endorsement at binding or through increased limits on the declarations page. Contrast that riggers coverage form with the AAIS 7151, which is the legal liability form. I think out of the three coverage forms, this is probably the one that's more commonly associated with true riggers liability coverage, as it's a little bit more conservative in the sense that it's going to tie coverage to a specified contract that our insureds could be signing out in the field. And so that's key. I'm getting some feedback, guys. I'm not sure if anyone else can hear that. We can just make sure our phones or our computers are on mute. With that said, this riggers legal liability contract, again, it's a little bit sort of, and it is going to require a contractual trigger. You know, I can speak, you know, sitting at my underwriting desk, it's funny how many requests we actually get where contracts aren't necessarily signed or being required. And that's the first thing that we're always looking for. And so making sure that that's in place when you are using this IAM 7151 form, recognizing that there is a contractual trigger. Similar to the previous riggers coverage form that we did address, this one does not have any sort of coverage for lost use. But again, that can be bolted on by endorsement. And this one also includes a defense cost language as well, in case you are in a situation where it can become legally liable via a federal form, will be. And this form also addresses temporary storage and transit exposure. The one thing that is unique in contrast to the other riggers liability 2150 form that we did address is that this one does have a time for temporary storage. This is very key, just kind of depending on the nuance of the coverage for, you know, are they generally holding items under control? I think we're having audio challenges. Is there any possibility you could dial in on the phone? If you click audio, it'll give you a phone number on the control panel. Okay. You cannot hear me right now? Right now we can, but you were drifting out. So if it happens again, we'll switch it. Okay. Sounds good. And again, these, the riggers liability form, again, has a 30-day limitation, and it can vary by carrier, depending on the proprietary coverage form that any said carrier may have. With the key takeaway that this one is a riggers legal liability, it has a contractual trigger, as well as a time limitation on the temporary storage provisions. The last coverage form we'll go over, just to kind of set up the rest of the conversation here, guys, is going to be the installation form, which is the IM7100. And what actually makes this unique is that the installation coverage form is built to be either first party or third party. But with that said, there is a rigging component to the installation float or coverage form. So again, this one actually could be applied in regards to third party exposure for riggers legal liability. Again, a lot of it really depending on the nuance of the work that you're insured performs. And even to further that, what type of contract are they signing that's going to require said coverage, and what's going to be the best fit kind of going forward? Again, one thing that isn't normally applicable is going to be any sort of loss of use provisions under an installation floater, being that it is set up to be either a first party or a third party coverage form through this AAIS example that we're using. And then also similar to the riggers coverage form that we addressed at the top of this conversation, there is no contractual trigger in order for coverage to respond. And that goes for either first party or third party. So with that said, we have an example here via picture of an underwriter at a desk. you get a submission in, you know, what do I do? Right, I got a submission. I'm being asked for a million and a half, 2 million, 3 million, $4 million of limit for rigorous legal liability. What do I do here? What are kind of the next steps to follow? You know, taking our application, kind of contrasting that with a copy of the contracts, which should always be requested. Because obviously we want to make sure we have a clear understanding on what our insureds are being contractually obligated to and what to look for. Looking for affirmation on what work is gonna be picked up by said agreement. And we'll go into some indemnity and insurance sections on how to actually review those contracts and pair that up with some of our submission information that we get via application. And again, any of those jobs, those jobs could look like construction jobs, pipes, cylinders, rebar, fine arts, statues, pretty much anything of value that's gonna have some sort of lifting or going back to the care custody control or bailees function of the work that our insureds are performing could roll into a rigorous legal liability exposure. MRI machines, drilling rigs out in the energy field. This exposure touches so many different aspects of the US economy and the classes that we all represent in our day-to-day world. So with that said, I'm gonna pull Ty Silva in to kind of speak on the subcontractor agreement and kind of some things to look out for. And what the idea guys that we kind of identified some possible coverage forms that we could use for a rigging job. We get our standard submission application and we kind of review that. We also should be requesting on the regular a copy of the agreement that our insureds are looking to sign. What do we do from here? But before Ty jumps in and kind of picks up from here, is there any initial questions that maybe we have Lillian that we wanna try to address in the moment? Let me see, I think you're... Yep, it looks like you're good. If anybody does have any questions though, please type them in to the chat. Oh, did you see the one from Pamela Roberts? I do not. Would you mind reading that over to me, Lillian? Yeah. Okay, so she was asking about coverage to respond to signed contract. So for coverage to respond to signed contract has to be in place. Yeah, exactly. So again, there's some bit of nuance and that's why we kind of built them into the PowerPoint for you guys to reference. But really it's that legal liability coverage form that's really going to be a little bit more conservative than your other standard AAIS forms that we went over. In particular, the standard rigors coverage form which does not require a contractual trigger. So being really specific about that. So you could have an insured where you maybe offer said policy form. And as soon as they step out and do any sort of work, they don't even necessarily have to have a signed contract in place in order for coverage to respond. And being really intentional on how you address one of those coverage forms as you marry them up to your insurances, depending on their individual risk characteristics and kind of how that applies out in the real world. So if that's our only question, Ty, I'll turn it over to you to kind of break down again, a sample copy of a contract. We kind of grabbed one at random, but why don't you take it from here and maybe give us some idea of what's a little bit more from an underwriting standpoint, just to make sure that everything is kind of falling in line and marrying up as it should. Yeah, absolutely, Jason. Thanks to everyone for taking time out to join this presentation. As Jason mentioned, we look at a lot of these risks on our desk with regards to riggers liability. We insure a ton of crane companies throughout the country who do both crane rental as well as rigging. So we see these contracts on a daily basis. Come over to the underwriter's desk, submission comes over, are you guys are digging through the application, taking a look at it? Jason alluded to earlier, the fact that we have a lot of risk Jason alluded to earlier, the first thing that you wanna look at is what type of agreement is the actual prospect utilizing or what type of agreement are they actually being forced to sign? One of the things that we like to do is we always prefer that a contractor that we are insuring try their best to try to get their actual internal contract signed as opposed to the other way around. It looks like we're getting some noise in the background. If somebody could mute their mic, that would be great. Thank you. So again, we would prefer that the prospect insured get their contract signed, but oftentimes when you are handling these rigging jobs, these riggers per se, or even these crane rental companies, they are forced to sign a master service agreement or a master subcontract agreement, which actually pushes all of the risk downstream. So you got a general contractor, you have the steel erector, the architects, et cetera, they're all pushing the risk down to the service company, which is that rigging company that you guys are writing insurance for. Some of that risk is indemnity, some of that risk is actually additional insurance, waivers of subrogation, et cetera. So you wanna take a look at that so you can identify what type of exposures that prospect insured has actually taken on, and that way you guys can write the right coverage for specifically looking at A, the scope of work, B, what requirements of insurance are required, waivers of subrogation again, whose insurance is primary, all of those things that you wanna look at. So first and foremost, what I like to do is jump right into this sample subcontract agreement. As I mentioned, one of the things you wanna look at is the scope of work. The scope of work in a contract should always be clearly defined. It should be detailed to the task that that specific prospect is performing, and here's the reason why. When you get on a construction site, specifically with a rigging company or a crane rental company, okay, these guys or even girls are actually working with multiple contractors on that particular site. It could be iron workers that they're working with, site supervisors, lift directors. If the crane operator is not part of the rigging company, you're working with a crane operator that you're not familiar with. You're working with an assembly disassembly director. You're working with signal persons and flaggers. You got all of these things going on during the process of a crane hoist or a crane lift itself. So that's a lot of exposure. So you definitely want to have the scope of work detailed out, written out into the contract, specifically identifying what your work is as opposed to others, because there's going to be a lot of co-mingling of activities amongst the parties on that particular construction site or on that crane lift operation. So definitely, first thing to look at is what's the scope of work? Make sure it's detailed into the contract. Make sure your prospect insured is not taking on any risk that is not something that they're actually doing. I'll wait for that slide to move over just a moment. Sorry for the delay here. So here's a great scope of work of what this particular rigging company would be assigned to do here. Obviously, as you can look at the screen, they are providing a tower crane. They're doing the erection of the tower crane itself. They're also doing the disassembly. They're actually providing a crane operator. That's one thing that you want to look at as well from an underwriting desk, okay? Is it a turnkey rigging operation where they actually provide, they do the rigging, but they also have a crane operator that they're providing as well? Definitely identify that at the start so you know what their risks they're taking on. The scope of work's also showing how many times the crane is going to be jumped in the air. That means basically they're extending the height of the crane six times within this particular contract. And each time they extend that tower crane in the air, that could be four sections of boom that's going up. I'll illustrate later in a claim later on at the end of this session where they were actually erecting a tower crane and they were jumping it four more stories. And unfortunately, you get a loss that occurs, but this is a great detailed scope of work on what that prospect, in short, is going to be assigned to do. Having it written out in the contract is the best way to protect your prospect, in short, so definitely you want to identify that. As you can see here, the scope of work does call for a master rigger. Specific states do require that riggers, that you have a master rigger. New York specifically is one of those states. It's also calling for signalman and flaggers as well. Key concept here is this subcontractor was going to be enrolled in the CSIP program. You want to identify that almost as well, whether there be a part of the CSIP or part of the OSIP. Definitely identify that at the first most. The equipment, the floater for the equipment usually sits outside of the OSIP on these particular jobs. So you want to take a look at that as well, but I would urge you all as underwriters, if you can get your prospect to get a copy of the OSIP or CSIP so you can see what coverages are actually being provided. I know this is an inland marine discussion, but also there's going to be a lot of GL exposure there as well. So getting a copy of that CSIP or OSIP is only going to come in handy for both you guys as well as your prospect in short. When you're looking at a contract, you definitely want to look at what indemnity obligations are being placed on your prospect in short. Oftentimes what we see, as I mentioned earlier, they're assigning an upper tier agreement where they push the indemnity downstream to the insured. You want to definitely identify whether that indemnity agreement runs in line with the state statute, that state anti-indemnity statute. We all know in the insurance world that indemnity is, there's no state, there's no national indemnity law. Let's stop there. So as you go from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, from state to state, indemnity laws change. You want to make sure that that contract that your prospect in short is executing has the right indemnity for the state that they're operating in. Otherwise, in the event that there's a claim, there's no indication that they're actually going to be able to enforce it if the insured is being demanded by the general contractor or the customer, wherever hired them, is obligated to indemnify them. So definitely want to look at that indemnity provision. You want to look at the insurance provision as well. I'm trying to keep an eye on the time as well. The insurance provision you definitely want to look at, again, as I mentioned earlier, you want to look at the limits, what's being required, whether there's a waiver of subrogation, who's primary, things of that nature. All of these things you definitely want to identify when you're underwriting that account, because trust me, when a claim comes in, facts change within the claim itself. Everyone gets the pointing fingers. Contracts get lost oftentimes. You definitely want to be looking at everything you can from a risk evaluation standpoint with regards to these contracts. And it gets ugly. It gets real ugly. You can have folks that's been in business and doing business with each other for 20 years. A claim occurs, they got a contract executed, and now the business relationship deters because there was a claim. Nobody wants to take responsibility for what happened. And then you have to file a breach of contract against your customer that you may have had a business relationship for a number of years. So those are some of the things that you definitely want to look at from an underwriting standpoint, because the contract in today's world and today's litigation can be a big component of how much risk is actually going to be assessed and what the loss is going to actually be at the end of the day, giving those contractual exposures. I'm going to tie it up right there. Is there any questions on this component? Want to open it up to the audience? So yes, if anyone has any questions, please feel free to type your question in the chat. And Ty, as of right now, there are not any additional questions in the chat. I was waiting for one. Again, just wrapping this thing up, it looks like we got something in there. What are CSIP and OSIP is the question. So you got a contractor controlled insurance policy, and then you have an owner controlled insurance policy, which is the OSIP. The CSIP is the contractor controlled policy. Those policies are in place to try to limit the litigation amongst the parties. As I mentioned earlier, when you do have a loss, the facts get muddy. The facts become convoluted. There's a lot of finger pointing. There's a lot of litigation that's going on. There is cross litigation amongst the parties. The OSIP and the CSIP policies actually try to control all of that to the best it can to keep everything in house and try to limit the litigation. I will tell you this, what I have seen is even though there's an OSIP policy as well as a CSIP policy in place, oftentimes these general contractors do obligate that particular crane rental company or that rigging company to carry an outside policy outside of the OSIP and CSIP in the event that that particular company has hired a subcontractor to do some work. So those are the things you wanna look for as well. I hope I answered that question. Thank you, Amy. So you do have another question. Yeah, I missed that one. Could you read that also, is that possible? Sure, yeah. This is from Don Jocelyn. What is the source of information an underwriter can access to determine what the state law is regarding a rigger's liability? Jason, can you help me with that? I think Jason, you're on mute, yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah, not necessarily state specific regarding state law around rigger's legal liability. Again, I think a lot of it is just really gonna revert back to the type of contract is the best way I could answer that. You just really wanna make sure you have an understanding of what the scope of work is and what sort of contractual obligations you're insured is looking to enter into. And then obviously pairing that up with your intended coverage structure, whether it's via deductible limits and just ensuring that you're kind of eyes wide open here. But as far as state law, not necessarily sure how to best answer that question other than just recognizing, we're all just kind of probing for clarity on exactly what we have on any given risk at any given time. And again, the best way to do that is to get a copy of the contract and then contrast that most importantly with what you're getting on the application. Again, underwriter blues here, but the application should be very consistent with the scope of work that we're getting the contract. And sometimes that always isn't the case, but being able from the underwriting desk to be able to decipher that and then go back to your retail agent and say, hey, this isn't really adding up, what do I have here? And being able to equip your retail agent to go back with the insured and get answers to those questions that you're looking for. So you can gain that level of comfort to go forward. And Jason, if I can add something here, if there is an interest as to, what is the state indemnity law? You can always go on Westlaw or a site like that to identify what the law is in that particular state to make sure that the language in the contract doesn't go afoul of that specific law. I'll give you a good example here. I don't know where we're at on time, but let's use a contractor that's operating out of Georgia and he has a contract where he wants to do a tower crane in South Carolina. Well, those two specific states have different indemnity laws. So you definitely wanna try to look up the law in South Carolina to make sure that it's not hurting your insured or at the very least look forward to whether it's a partial indemnification as opposed to a broad-based indemnification. And that's what I would stress the most. If this helps you guys here on the call, always try to get a partial indemnification in the contract. Because again, these parties are working with multiple other contracts on that site. Again, there's a lot of co-mingling and of activity. I would stress to the audience, look to get a partial indemnification in the contract if your particular prospect has the leverage in the market to do that. Ty, repeat the name of that website again. Westlaw, yes. Yeah, it looks like one more came in and she was referring to our indemnity law. But yeah, Westlaw is a great site you can go on. And again, there's always Google, guys. You can go right on there and just type in anti-indemnity law for a specific state and it'll bring up the state statute. And that's probably the best way to get it done if you don't have access to council or even Westlaw itself. Very good. I think we're set with the questions for now. Thank you. Are we okay to transition to a poll question? Yes, we are. So, Eileen, did you want me to bring that up, or? Here we go. I saw we got some answers already, so that's awesome. All right. So, again, which of the AAIS forms has a limitation in the number of days an item can be temporarily stored? A, installation. B, rigorous coverage. C, legal liability. Looks like you guys are on it. Yes, it is C. And, again, just being cognizant, guys, of just some of the nuance when it comes to rigorous liability from your coverage form, knowing how your coverage form works in and out is just a key fundamental aspect of underwriting that we want to make sure we address, again, as we kind of get ready to transition into the broader scope of work when our insurers actually get to work. And, you know, we're moving on to the next submission, but our guy Keith here will be able to speak to kind of what happens after we've issued our policy and or endorsement for coverage. But before we transition into Keith, do we have any other questions? Or I think we're good. Lillian, Eileen, should we take maybe a break for a few minutes? Or should we continue? Maybe I would suggest to continue for 10 minutes and then take a break. Okay. Okay. So, Keith, if you kind of want to pick up from here, again, we've issued our policy and or endorsement. You got the green light. Yeah, we'll let you take it. You got it, Bill. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Keith Adolph. I'm part of the Risk Management Team at MBIS. This next section I'm going to do, basically what I really want to talk about is just the day in the life of a crane operator, what happens out in the field, just from when he wakes up and either goes to the job site or he's got to go to the yard first of the insured to pick up the crane and go to the job site. So I just want to break it all down and really give you an idea of what, you know, what we do in a day's work. I would like to break down different types of cranes and some of the most common ones that are used in the business. Alongside of all this, I do a lot of deposition reading for Lumar Consulting for various law firms on crane accidents and all that. And a lot of stuff that you see that I hear in standards and whenever there's a crane accident or any kind of issues on the job, it's always easiest to just say, yeah, it's the crane operator's fault. And that's one of the big things I really put my heart into is try to avoid that. Just that's one of the key reasons that I got involved with the depositions because it seemed like the crane operator was like the scapegoat for everything. It was easy to just say, yeah, it's the operator's fault. He should have known better where there's a lot of people on the job and everybody plays a part in making it safe that everybody goes home at the end of the day with ten fingers and ten toes and putting all the blame on the operator all the time. That's not not the way it should be. And not to say that, you know, sometimes operators were human and we get complacent and sometimes get a little bit lazy and we do make mistakes ourselves. But for a long time there, it just seemed like it was the scapegoat is to go to the operator. But I like to walk through the day-to-day operations of it only so you can see what we really do from the get-go. From when we get up, when we get to the yard or when we get to the site because preventing loss and all this, it plays a part all the way to the job site while we're on the job site. And, again, Jason has touched on it. Ty has touched on it. There's a lot of moving parts on the job site. And just to keep it safe and keep it productive and move on with it, it takes the effect of everybody on that job to make that happen. So what I'm going to do first here is I like to, and, again, I might be preaching to the choir, which some of you is, and some people may not have any idea what the cranes actually look like or what's used. But I want to go through just a set amount of the cranes that are out there in the field, some of the most common. I'll do the same thing when we get to the rigging section. But what I want you to keep in mind is that these cranes, the rigging that we use out there, there's a limitation for everything. Strength-wise, what the crane can pick, and strength-wise, what a piece of rigging can handle. And, again, you see loss prevention right there, cranes and rigging, loss prevention and pitfalls. There's only one way to prevent all that loss prevention, and that's by training, safety training. I can't stress it enough, training, training, training. Because if you don't know what you're looking for or you don't know how to do certain calculations to make sure that you have the correct rigging in order to pick this piece, you don't know what the proper way to do it. I get a lot of people look at a shackle, and they go to pick it up, and they think because it's, you know, 10 inches big and 8 inches wide, they're like, oh, yeah, that's plenty big enough for what we need. And that just shows me, you know, somebody that hasn't done the homework, hasn't done enough schooling and training on everything. But the first section we'll jump into, these are three of the most common cranes that you will see in the business. I spent a large majority of my career on that crane that's on the left side. This is a Manitowoc 2250. It's a 300-ton crane. I did a lot of work on bridges. I've been on barges with them, a lot of land work, obviously. My favorite was just being on the water, being on the barges. But this particular crane here, again, 300-ton. It's considered a lattice boom crawler. Obviously, looking at it, this crane is going to have to be assembled on the job. All right? And we'll get to that in a second, show you how many trucks it physically takes to bring one of these cranes. But again, that loss control that we talked about, there's going to be a boatload of trucks that are bringing this crane in, and then you have a bunch of people working together in a safe manner to put all this together. Next crane in the middle is a rough-terrain crane. You see these everywhere. And these two I pointed out, really, these three on this first page, because they are used everywhere on the job sites and very common in the industry that we are today. This crane here, again, won't have to be put together when it comes out to the job like that crawler on the left side. This one we can really put on a low buoy, tie off the block to the front, and she's ready to go. When she gets to the job, drive her right off, and she can go ahead and start going to work, where these other two cranes, the lattice boom crawler and the tower crane, obviously, they have to be assembled once we get all the pieces there. Again, with these cranes that have to be assembled, again, there's a process for it. The manufacturer, your lift director, your safety guy that's on there, he's going to be there and oversee the whole process of everything. And from an operator standpoint, because we all know the time, time is money. We've heard that phrase over and over while we're on the job. So when we're putting one of these cranes together, I work with a lot of safety guys and a lot of lift directors. They want this piece at that time because it doesn't do us any good if we're getting pieces for this crane and they're not the next ones that I need to get put together, especially, it all depends on the job site. You might be in a tight area where I don't have a whole lot of room. I got a piece way too early that I don't even need, so let's see if we can put it somewhere. Again, all this little stuff goes into the thought process that day. I need the area on the job. I need a crane like this rough terrain right next to me to help put this one together. This particular crane can put itself together, but it's a lot easier when you have a sister crane with you there that can assist with everything, putting this together. The same thing with this tower crane when we get over to the right side. Before we even get that, I know a lot of people, when they drive by the job, they see the crane already in the air. Same thing with these tower cranes. They'll see them either freestanding or they'll see them attached to the building when they're tied off to the building. But what you don't see before that is when that crane is being set up and they pick the area where it's going to be, so they know that this hook can reach everywhere that it needs to go all around the building, the engineer comes out, takes soil samples where it's going to sit, and he'll determine what kind of pad that it's going to sit on and what size pad they're going to dig out. So a crane like that, that's probably about an eight to 10-ton crane that's sitting right there. So you're talking about a pad probably 20-foot wide by about between six to eight-foot deep, and they'll set up what size rebar they're going to use for that through the engineer, maybe a four-four, number five bar that goes through there and set up a whole footer for just that crane with the anchor feet for that crane. And then once everything's cured and we know everything's good, then we'll start erecting this crane and putting everything together. But again, there's so much more goes into it that people don't see on it. All they see is the crane up and attached to the job. And again, there's a sequence for everything, and safety plays a big role in this. These tower cranes, they can come in in a couple of different forms that you can rent them or the contractor buys them. This particular crane up here, this is what they call the hammerhead. They also come in a flat top you see underneath where this mast right here isn't there, it's just a straight counter jib and jib. Or they come in a luffer style, which actually if you take this red piece, okay, everything above the tracks, and you mount that right up top, obviously it'd be a touch smaller than that 300-ton. But that boom would work in that manner where it booms up and down, all right, like the red crane does, as opposed to this trolley just going in and out with the hook. And then the last tower crane that they make is a self-erector that you can pretty much put that wherever you want on the job, and that sits right on outriggers similar like this that's on the rough terrain in the middle, and you can use that crane. You see a lot of the self-erectors because they're smaller at housing when they're putting houses together and condos, hotels, stuff like that, because it's nice and easy. Just to let you know, as far as heights, it all depends. I spoke in the beginning about how you have limitations for everything. This crane right here, even though it's a 300-ton crane, the more boom you put in it, the less you can pick. So when you get this crane in this picture, and I'll answer your question in one second, I see you pop up there. This crane right here is set up. This is a 300-ton crane like I mentioned to you. From this tip here down to here is one complete piece. This would be the head section. This piece here down to the heel where it pins on is considered the heel section. That crane is actually set up with that small a boom to pick 300 tons because that's what that crane with maximum counterweight on the back. But like I said in the beginning, everything has a limiting factor, rigging and the cranes. The fact that it only has one wire rope hanging, a single part hanging off that drum, that crane goes from being a 300-ton crane to being able to pick 29,500 pounds and that's it. When we run the cranes out there, there's two numbers that I have to look for. How much boom, what's my boom good for capacity, and then how I'm reaved up, how much I can pick my line pull. I always try and match those two numbers up. There's a whole process of putting a block on here and reaving up extra parts that would be hanging. Just so you've got a basic knowledge of how it works with the cranes. Again, I'm just touching on basics. I'm not even going to touch base on computers and power breaking the computer and setting the computer up so it matches the configure of the crane because that's a whole other ballgame with technology and the way everything's changing. This tower crane, I can tell you the tallest one I've ever worked on. I was at the Rebel Casino in Atlantic City, and we were the service crane in the middle and we were 900 feet up. I used to love when people would say, hey, wait for the wind to die down. Yeah, because let me tell you, that's never happened when you're 900 feet up. Let me check out the one question that did come through. Why do some areas of the country seem to favor use of a tower crane more than others? For example, Washington, D.C. used tower cranes in buildings. That's a good question. Again, when you get into the city and obviously you see how little room a tower takes up as opposed to such a bigger area to have that crawler crane set up. Another reason they would use it, obviously, space is tight. Anytime we're in the city, the smallest footprint that you can have that you're working out always is the best. But again, the sheer weight of this crane on top of it, actually both of these cranes. Because if you did have to set something up in the city and all that, you know that there's, especially in New York City, Washington, when you have electric lines and vaults and everything else running underground in the streets. I've seen blueprints before where they said, oh, there's no vault here. And then we find out there is a vault. There might be an abandoned one that just wasn't put on a new print when it was updated. So just the sheer weight of some of these machines is one of the big reasons. Space is a big reason why we can't use them in there. But, yeah, a tower crane has a small footprint on it, but could still cover so much area based off whatever size jib that we are going to put on there. I hope I answered your question, bud. OK, that 2250 I talked about, this is what she looks like when she comes to the job. Just to put basic boom on it, not a luffing jib or a fixed jib or anything like that. So to actually assemble this crane, to get it ready for work, it'll take 14 trailers to get her to the job and get her all together. And again, you know, Jason and all were touching on the rigors and liability and just how much stuff really goes into all this. You got a lot of people working together. You got a lot of hands in the mix, banging pins in, setting up, getting ready for the next piece to come in. It's pretty neat with these newer cranes. It isn't like the old cranes from the 50s and 60s where you were beating pins and you really had to get everything in place and all. These cranes, like I said, they will put themselves together. Takes a little longer, but it's a lot nicer with the assist crane there to help speed the whole process. But these cranes can put themselves together. This right here where it says FACT, that's just fast aligning connection technology. It's Manitowoc's way of putting their cranes together. It's the system that they use, that they manufacture and they design. And it does, they can put the cranes together really, really easily. Again, because time is money and they want to get to work and get everything up and going. Thanks, Keith. Do you think we should have time for a break now? Sure. All right. Sounds good. Okay. And it'll be two o'clock when we come back? That'll work. Thank you very much. Is anyone there? Hi, we're on a 10 minute break until 2 o'clock. Okay. I was having trouble with the sound. I came on, there's no one here, so I wanted to make sure. Thank you. You're welcome. Eileen, everyone's on a hard mute, correct? Yeah, but if they lose their Internet connection and come back in, then they're on a soft mute. I'm trying to see how do I put them all on a hard mute. Ellie said she'll do it, and then this way we'll just have to make sure our three presenters, we unmute them, but we're going to hard mute everyone. Right. Yeah. Okay. Bye-bye. Y'all ready, Irene, to get rolling again? You're good to go. All right, sounds good. All right, I'll pick up where we left off again. Hope everybody's back on there. All right, the types of cranes, the next ones you see here on this part of the PowerPoint presentation, these are the most common cranes you're going to see in your rental fleets. Obviously, they don't need to be transported to the job on trailers. They can be driven to the job site and then set up real quick so you can make the pick and get out. You see a lot of this set in air conditioners. The crane on the left is a little bit of a unique one, an all-terrain crane, because that's actually a bigger crane. That whole boom section up top here would actually have to be taken off of this crane in order to transport it just because of the weight. But these three cranes here, when you hear your rental fleets and taxi service, these are the three main cranes that are used in the rental fleets. I have one more crane coming up right after this, but your all-terrain crane, hydraulic truck mount in the center, and your boom truck. Again, some of the most common used in the daily rental fleet. Again, you can get in and out with these cranes real quick, come in, make the pick, move on to the next job. These guys are really the moneymakers for a crane rental outfit. That 2250 I showed you, the red crane on the previous page, obviously a bigger crane, a lot more setup and all that. You're probably talking to rent that monthly, probably somewhere around $30,000 a month in order to rent that crane. Where if you had something smaller, you can get in and out and do the job that you need with this. This particular crane in the center is probably around a 75-ton crane. But like I was talking before about the limitations that go with everything, with the crane and the rigging, we talked about that single part line on this. Because even though this is a 75-ton crane, that single part line, if we just have that single wire rope that's connected to the ball, even though she's 75 tons, she can probably pick ballparks. She'd probably pick about 16,000 pounds with that one part, and that is all. Again, the more boom you put out, it limits your capacity and the way you're reaved up with that parts of line. It's a limitation for everything. Next one is a city crane. Again, I had that question earlier about with the towers because it's got a smaller footprint, doesn't take up as much area, and the weight isn't an issue. Again, this was a newer crane that they came out with. You drive this to the job. It's smaller. It still has a 50-ton capacity, but you still get all the reach out of it. Again, it's another one as technology changes. I mean, you got to change with it and learn how it all works. This particular crane here, you see that again. That's why they call it a city crane because it can get into the smaller, tighter areas in the city and set the air conditioners and make the picks and do everything that the bigger crane can, except it can do it with such a smaller footprint. It doesn't need as big an area in order to do everything. So, this crane has also become a big one in all the rental fleets they can send out. Again, you still get a 50-ton capacity crane out of it, too, if you really did need to pick something heavy. So, we talked in the beginning about the loss prevention. Where does it really start for each day of a crane operator? The biggest thing, like I said, does it start at the insured's crane yard when I go to the yard to pick the crane up? Again, I go to the crane in the morning. I got to do my walk around just to make sure I didn't pick up a nail, a screw, or something in the tire, make sure I don't have a flat from the night before, make sure there isn't nothing leaking, make sure the lights work, the blinkers. Obviously, because I'm going to be heading on the highway as soon as I get my pre-trip done. I make sure I have the job ticket for me for that crane, I mean for that next job that we're going to. A job ticket's a big one. I know Ty probably touched base or talked maybe a little bit about it when it comes time. But, I mean, this all plays a part into making sure that job ticket's signed by the contractor when the operator gets to the job site. Loss prevention, again. We're driving to the job now. Got to drive the crane to the job now. I got to follow all the DOT and state regulations. Just to give you an idea, every state's different. In New Jersey, some cranes are only permitted on certain highways just because of the weight and size of them. Other ones, they just can't fit through a toll plaza and their inability to keep up with the speed limit that's on that road. So we made it to the job, or we made it to the yard. We picked the crane up. We did our pre-trip. All right, we're already doing loss prevention. We're staying on top of it so we have a safe day. Did my pre-trip walk around. Now I made it all the way to the job. Again, no issues on the job. No accidents, no near misses, nothing like that. Again, making sure we get the crane to the job. All right, now when I'm at the job site, now I got to find out where we're making the picks. How's the access road for me to go from the gate where I get in up to the picking area? Again, you got a million different situations going through your head when you get on the job and I'm looking for the safest way that I'm going to do everything. All right, and once we get to the job site, again, like I was just saying, I want to see where the access road is to get to make the picks. When I get to that area where I'm going to pick, the crane operator, now he's got to look at the ground. When I put the outriggers out and I put some blocking and dunnage underneath the outrigger pads, is it going to sink? How am I going to do with the ground conditions that are all around me? Is there any underground utilities, overhead obstructions, power lines? All right, you name it, and that's what we're looking for. Now, the picture down the bottom is just to show you that even though you got to the job site on the left, this picture on the left, once you got to the job site, everything was fine. Now, you were taking the access road to get back to where you're going to make the picks, and it looks safe enough to you. So, you hug to the right side, and the ground just washed out at that one section. It didn't do it for the first 100 feet coming in, but then when you got to here, you found the weak spot, and the crane rolled over. And again, the map on the right side is just something I did for our operators back home. A lot of people come in as trainees, and I laid out the map of New Jersey and what are the most common highways that we use, Route 130, 295. Those roads have the least amount of bridges on them, depending on what crane that you're going to transport or drive it to the job site, just so they know the best route to take to get there. So, again, just in the day of an operator, you got a ton of decisions that you're making, and a lot of inspections, and just a safe process that you go through in order to get the crane to there. And then it doesn't stop once you get to the job. Now, you're looking at the access road where we're going to make the picks, and now when we get up to where we are going to make the pick, now we're going to turn around. And even basic stuff, like if I am picking a piece off the top of a building or a bridge, where am I going with it after I have it? Because the rule of thumb with the crane is once you pick it and you got it, you own it now. So once you're hooked up and you have it in the air, you own it, and now you got to figure out where you got to go. So a lot of times I like to do all this ahead of time. I want to, at our pre-lift meeting, talk to the lift director, talk to the rigger, talk to the signal person, be like, all right, where are we going with this and everything else? So, again, just a day in the life of an operator. I got a couple of these videos in the PowerPoint pretty much just to show you a couple of accidents, a couple near misses. This one in particular, this particular lift that's coming up right here, you have two cranes here, okay? This is what we call a tailing crane. He's hooked up to the bottom end of this object that they're lifting. Then you have this crane here. He's actually going to take the weight of this. So, basically, when they start this pick, this thing is going to be horizontal, okay? And once they're done picking this up, by the time they get done, as long as there's no issues, they'll tilt this top piece up, and this piece will be vertical by the time they're done. Now, on the job site, this is a common thing. We use two cranes to make this pick all the time. But, again, we're going to go from a horizontal. Actually, it'll be this way, horizontal, trip this end all the way up to where she's sitting vertical. This crane will have the weight of everything, and then we'll cut this guy loose, and he's done with the pick. He'll swing out of the way and let this other guy do everything and make the pick where he's got it. Now, with this particular setup, there was a pre-lift meeting, I assume. I don't know the details of this one. But if this was made, there'd be a pre-lift meeting, and I want to see what my capacities of the slings are. I want to see if there's softeners on there because, obviously, we have synthetic slings, and we're going against metal here. All right? Not that you can't. The slings are plenty strong for that, you know, capacity-wise. But you always think of everything. You can't leave any one little stone unturned because that's always that one that'll come back to haunt you. Obviously, they picked these two cranes. They look like 100-ton cranes by themselves, if not more, 100, 150-ton cranes, if not bigger. So they know that it'll take the weight of everything here. But, again, we're going to take this piece from horizontal to vertical, and this guy is supposed to have the weight of everything at the end, and we'll cut this guy loose. And I'll speed this up to where it gets a little entertainment. Now, you take a look at the job site. This is a typical job site, what we're doing. You got guys walking around. All right, they're trying to stay clear of the piece that's being lifted. This guy's a little bit close for my liking. Again, on a job like this, you'll have somebody giving hand signals. I don't see anybody's arms moving up there, so I'm assuming that they're giving each other voice signals. Somebody must have a radio. But just keep an eye on this because it'll be coming up here shortly. And, again, this was one of those where they lucked out on this one. Keith, it's funny you had brought up the point about you guys do tandem lifts all the time. Yeah, again, that's something to check on our applications, guys. Yeah, more than one crane involved because obviously the complexity of the lift gets heightened. I'll be honest with you, Jason, and what Jason's saying, you know, with everybody, the complexity part of it is this guy, his main job is just to stop this from touching the ground till this guy can get it up in the air and take the weight of it off. He actually, this guy, when this is getting close, this piece is getting close to vertical, if he doesn't let off and keep coming down with it, and obviously I can't show you on this, but if you watch on a computer when we're doing it on his LMI screen for how much weight he's holding, he can really get himself in a bad way by not giving this other crane all the weight and coming off of it a little bit faster. He doesn't realize that if you got a new guy that's making a pick, he's actually holding back, and he can actually get himself in a bad way, too, by not giving him the weight, because obviously this guy, once this is vertical, he's supposed to have the weight of it. So, everybody saw this here. We have four slings up here, four synthetic slings, and we saw the two cut loose, right? Whenever I do any of these with a tandem lift, I always make sure that I know that the rigging that I'm using can handle, just two of them, can handle the weight of that piece, whatever it is that I'm picking. That way, I know if something does happen, I know it can handle it, because as of right now, these two slings got the weight of it, all right, and we talked about softeners, you know, whenever you got synthetic, you got any kind of sharp edge, you always want some kind of softener, but right now, you have two slings doing all the work. These two, that's the weight of it, that are draped down, they're waiting until this piece is almost vertical, so this guy can take, you know, take the total weight of it, and we can cut this guy loose. So, again, just to show it right where it cuts loose, just keep your eye on this sling right here, and again, this was a lucky near miss. Again, little things like that, you know, it goes a long way when you go over, so when you hear them say, you know, when we get ready to make the pick, I'll check it, and I'll check it again, and I'll check it again, I don't care what they say, but you got to really look at something, look at the way you're set up four, five, six times, just to make sure everything is correct. So, and again, this one's a near miss, Ty's got one coming up at the end, there was casualties on that one. All right, so just a poll question for everybody. Everybody wants to take a look at that. What do you think caused the rigging to fail? I see them coming in, I see them coming in, errors, there's the one I'm looking for. Okay, the poll question on number one. What do you think caused the rigging to fail? Okay, obviously, the answer here for this one is going to be C, rigging softeners. Now I just tried to give a little hint why the pick was actually in process and anytime there's a sharp edge, and it only takes a minute to put any kind of softener, and softeners could be anything. It could be, there's an angled piece of steel there, you could cut a piece of PVC and slide it on there. You could put wood in there, just anything to keep the sling away from that sharp edge. And it don't matter if it's metal on metal, it's still the same thing, even with a wire rope sling, it'll chew right through that also. So just the fact that it was synthetic, and I would chew through a little bit easier, but the same process happens with a wire rope sling, it'll eat right through it. Number two, what should be done with rigging when it's not in use? So if we had some rigging, we put it all away, or we used it for the day, or we used it for an hour, 15 minutes, it don't matter. What should we do with the rigging when we're done using it? Anybody else want to chime in on it? Very good. Okay. What should be done with rigging when it's not in use? And the answer is going to be D. Store it somewhere, protect it from the weather. I got a slide coming up at the very end with a couple of beams that I picked on one of the jobs I was on. They were 216,000 pounds apiece. And when it was time to pick those beams, that rigging came out with the site supervisor. And when I was done picking it, they left with him. As soon as I was done, I'd swing right over and put them in the back of his pickup because, obviously, he didn't want anything to happen to them because we were using them for all the heavy lifts. So, again, you just keep them clean, keep them away from everything. You don't want them nicked or cut up or any kind because any kind of blemish to that rigging takes away from the capacity. And I'll get into it a little bit more a little bit later, but just the fact that the sun fades them out and discolors them. Now, it's cutting in and it's degregating the fibers that are in there with a synthetic sling. So, you're actually there is a you do lose capacity on this. And I have a short video that shows you one that was sitting out in the sun. And it gives you its rate of capacity when it was bought from the factory. And then it shows you when they pull test it and pull it apart, how much less it could pick now just from being out in the sun. So, again, working near saltwater where I live is a lot of saltwater by the ocean. And again, if we get those slings wet, you don't think about it. The little salt crystals from the saltwater get inside there and start eating away at everything. So, whenever you get any kind of slings wet near the saltwater and all, you're supposed to rinse them out and get rid of all that, all the salt off of them before it starts to deteriorate and everything. All right, just myself as an operator. And again, when I watched that video the first time and we were putting this presentation together for everybody, for all the guys and the ladies that are in the attendance today, just me as an operator. And just from the years being around this stuff, this was just some of the questions that went through my head. You know, was there a pre-lift meeting? Did we get together and discuss all this stuff? Because maybe those softeners would have been picked up at that time. Was there a lift director? Was there a qualified rigger attaching the rigging to the object being lifted? There's been a big push for all that stuff. All right, being a qualified rigger, qualified signal person. Was there a signal person there? You guys watched the same video that I did, and I was looking for somebody's arm to be moving, maybe giving a hoist signal. I didn't see anything, so I just assumed that they were giving voice signals. Number one, as an operator, I'd ask them immediately, what's the weight of the object? All right, so I know where I have to be as far as I am with my boom. Are the slings and rigging hardware the correct type to make this lift? And they were. You can make those picks with synthetic slings. They were synthetic round slings that they have. The beams that I told you I picked, we used the same synthetic round slings. Will there be a transfer of weight? How about that for a question, a poll question for everybody? There was four slings up there, and I had mentioned that. Will there be a transfer of weight to the other slings? Yes or no? Very good, Matt. Kat, very good. Mark, very good. There you go. Yeah, remember, those two are just taking the weight of everything until we get close to being vertical. Then the energy of the load will be, you don't see it, but just from a rigging standpoint, it kind of gets transferred between the four of them while it's vertical in the air. Again, questions that went through my head, was the rigging inspected before the lift, just to make sure everything's good? Were the slings rated capacities adequate to handle the weight of the objects being lifted? There's the big one that we talk about, and Ty's going to touch base on this again. Were softeners necessary in this situation? Obviously, the answer is going to be yes for that one. Anytime there's a sharp object, always, always, always, no matter if it's a nylon, a synthetic, or a wire rope sling, because it'll chew right through that like it does everything else. All right, what is the first step to a safer job site and preventing loss? And I told you in the very beginning, it's going to be training. Again, if you have no idea what you're doing or what you're looking for, what are some of the key inspection stuff that you're supposed to look for in rigging? And pretty much up the top of that slide, training equals loss prevention. It helps you keep everything safe on the job. It all starts right here on the left side in the classroom. This is where we start for all of it, whether it's rigging, whether it's learning how to run a crane, even walk the crane and drive the crane around. It all starts in classroom first with a little brief overview of everything. Obviously, nothing's like being in the machine when you finally get out there, and now it all really hits home. But this is where it all starts. It all starts in the classroom with the very basic knowledge, whether it's cranes, rigging, or learning all the OSHA standards that can go along with this. Everybody gets so focused on just running the crane and being safe, which you're supposed to. I mean, we're supposed to know how to run the crane, and we put a lot of focus. But I really catered my stuff to really start teaching everybody more about the standards because a lot of the standards in there, they're in place to help you and give you a safe workplace. So there's a standard that's at the end there through OSHA where if you're not sure of something and you feel it's a safety concern, you don't have to make the pick. So until your safety concerns, you know, you feel have been addressed, and now you go ahead and make the pick. But, again, I always tell our operators, I said, if you're just nervous about, you know, making a pick, that don't work. But there is a standard there. If you have safety concerns, you don't have to make that pick until, you know, you feel that those concerns have been adequately taken care of. Same thing with the rigging, the limitations I talked about earlier, the selection of the correct rigging. Obviously, we're not going to use these nylon slings if we're working at a steel plant, right, and we got a lot of acids or any kind of stuff like that where we're dealing with in a plant. Hold on one second. Let me see. We just had a question pop up. How much consideration does a written training program play when determining to write a wrist? Jason, Ty, how much consideration does a written training program play when determining to write a wrist? Yeah, I would say based on this presentation and kind of what keeps going over, guys, it's a lot, right? You want to see how really comprehensive that is. At a bare minimum, we should be getting a copy of the table of contents of any sort of training guide so that we can get an idea of are these things are in place that keeps describing from a risk mitigation standpoint. So, yeah, no, it's absolutely critical. And getting an idea of not only who the ownership is, but who are the safety people and what are their particular experience. You know, as much information as we can get in color, we can get around. Those particular characteristics can only help us shape our approach on a particular risk. And, Quan, I'll be honest with you, each state's going to be different. As far as like in New Jersey, you need three items in order to run a crane. You need your CCO license for that particular crane you're running. You need the state license from New Jersey. And you also need your medical examiner certificate that comes along with your CDL. So you need those three items to run a crane. Now, again, each state is going to be different what they require. But, yeah, no, and then the training procedure, even though they have their CCO, again, make sure it's for the actual crane that, you know, they're running on that. So they have a large hydraulic and they run a lattice curler. Obviously, that cert is going to cover that machine if they're on a lattice curler. It only covers the certification only covers for the lattice curler. With the rigging in the – oh, go ahead. If I can add something here as well, they asked a question about training. And you also touched on, you know, certifications and stuff of that nature. One of the things also that a lot of people are catching on to is it's a three-step process. You have to have training. You have to have certification. But also that operator, as Keith was alluding to, has to be evaluated on that piece of equipment that he intends to operate. So keep in mind that three-step process, training, certification, and then another step further, evaluation of the operator's skill set on a particular piece of machinery. Also, with regards to the application, you know, when that application comes across your underwriting desk, I think Jason was touching on this earlier. Look at the experience of the actual operators, the experience of the safety director, even the experience of the ownership. Have they actually been in the field? What we're seeing a lot is a lot of these crane companies and rigging companies are being purchased by private equity firms. Does that private equity firm have any – anyone in their firm have experience in the actual field, or are they just making an acquisition? So those things are critical. You definitely want to identify that on the application. Just wanted to add that in there, Keith. Yeah, absolutely, Ty. And Ty brings up a good point because I didn't even think that far to go into it, where a CCO, when you do get your certification for that particular crane, all right, that model or that style of crane, you'll have to take a written test and a practical test through that. So obviously your training will be either done by yourself or through an employer, but you'll have a written and practical test that you have to take through CCO. And then, you know, your evaluation by the contractor who you go to work for. So, yeah, there is a process to make sure of this. I know on the first day on the job when I get there, that's the first thing they want to see. When we go to get signed up on the job, they want to see my license for whatever designations that I hold for what cranes, and they want to see my signal card, my rigger card, and everything else, you know, the usual. They will. They'll photocopy all that stuff before we can even get going on the job. Again, as far as the training stuff goes, we talked about the cranes and the steps and the standards. We talked a little bit about the rigging. Again, the selection and inspection removal criteria. When am I supposed to get rid of this? When I see broken wires, how many broken wires for a wire rope sling? Any kind of cuts, burrs, burning, you know, snags or anything on the rigging that I'm using? This rigging right here is one of the best because these are called tattletales. There's a lot of fiber inside of this. There's like fiber loops that are one solid fiber loop that's connected to another fiber loop, another loop, another loop. And if something does get ripped or stretched or broke, this tattletale starts to get sucked in. So, if you get one and one tattletale is out to here and the other one is just barely showing, then there's been some damage to that rigging. So, there's a lot of, there's a lot, again, with technology and the way they do everything, there's a lot of different ways that the guys out in the field now can tell if there's something wrong with that rigging before they go to use it. The rigging we use when you pick those big beams that had a little patch that you, excuse me, that you had to open up and had a little ultraviolet light that came with it, a little flashlight with a purple lens. And pretty much they had somebody throw a jacket over the other guy. He looked in there and had me take at least a 20,000-pound strain on it. And then you could see those fibers that I just talked about. And if it made a straight line across, all the fibers were intact. And if the line went across and then there was a red dot down here and that one fiber was ripped or stretched or it had damage to it. Again, as technology progresses, you get better ways to really inspect rigging and see if there is any deficiencies. Down on the bottom, you see softeners again. I can't stress them enough for everything. And right here, the second to last right here, correct hitch configuration. I don't care what piece of rigging this is, and I'm going to show you on the next couple of slides. There's only three configurations you can do with rigging, three hitch configurations that you put it in. Basket, vertical, and choker. Regardless of what they try and tell you when they get a little entertaining and they start trying to do these variations of stuff. And again, on the right side, just finishing out the training. It all starts here. I always show this picture. This is a training center I worked at down in Texas. This is the proving ground for everybody. This is where we show you how to set the crane up, how to set the computer up, how to do your walk around, inspect it, what to look for. Load charts and line pull. We would do the bulk of it in the classroom over here, and then we translate everything to out here. And block reaving and line pull and everything else that goes along with it. But again, each one of these has got its own way of doing everything. So each one of these computers is different of all these cranes in there. So it's just a matter of learning the system and see how each computer functions. And I can tell you every crane's got its little quirks of how it works and how it operates. And you pick them up as you go along. I've had some cranes where there's delays in swing and other ones have real fast toys. Other ones have slower ones. So it all depends. All right. Next one, just basic rigging fundamentals. All these ones in red, there's design factors and safety factors that go along with all this rigging. And again, this is part of that limiting factor. But this is the safety factor to help you out. The bulk of them is going to be a five-to-one safety factor, and I'll show you on the next one just to make it easier. Crosby and the people that make all the rigging. Rigging's a tough life, and you just see a lot of rigging. And Ty will show you when he gets to his in his slide. I mean, you'll see some beat-up rigging out there in the job. That's why they have a five-to-one safety factor for rigging hardware, slings, and other items. Because they know what kind of life they're going to have when they get out into the field. I always tell everybody the other day, you know, if it's Friday afternoon and we're looking to go home and that's the only shackle out there and the only rigging that's left and we just got to move one piece real quick, that's what the pieces we're going to use so we can all go home. Especially if the super already took all the rigging and put it all away. So, again, they know what kind of life rigging have. It's a hard life and it depends on the type of work you're doing. I did a lot of pile driving and the rigging shackles and everything. They take a beat in the whole day when you're driving the piles in the ground all day. All right. These three right here are the most common pieces of rigging that you will see out in the field. Your nylon slings, they use them for everything. They're great. You can get them all different shapes, sizes, lengths, capacities. Shackles. Again, the most common is a standard shackle right here. All right. With a screw in pin and a standard wider rope sling is what they are. And this right here is the three basic pitch configurations. So on this tag right here, it would show you these configurations right here. And it'll tell you when I have this sling straight up in the air, it's good. The strength of the sling. So whatever I'm hanging from it, I can pick and hold up 11,200 pounds when it's in vertical. Or if I choke it in this manner, I'm good for 8200. Or if I basket it, I'm good for 22,000. Again, you guys can see right there as I choke it and put extra tension on the sling body and sling eye. Now I start cutting into the capacity. This right here where it says basket at 22,000. They're saying I'm taking this sling and you shaping it just like this one. But in order to achieve that 22,000, each one of these legs has to be vertical. All right. In order to achieve that number. So if I have a single crane hook right here and I bring this eye into it and this eye and put them both in there. I've created sling tension now on that angle and I'm going to get to that slide in the middle. So that 22,000 no longer plays a part. All right. Now it's going to be less than that 22,000. And again, if you look over on this one, it'll be the same deal. Here's the three main hitch configurations that we can do. Vertical choker and you see it right there. A 90 degree basket. These legs have to be straight up and down in order to have 17,600 for capacity. As soon as I take these and hook them in on an angle to the crane hook, I start to lose in capacity. So just to give you an idea that five to one safety design factor I talked about on this shackle. This shackle left the factory after it was strength tested, broke, pulled, bent. All right. The way the Crosby does it. I got a short video to show you. They gave it a working load limit. Okay. That'll be our capacity that we're going to use out in the field. A working load limit of eight and a half tons. So that means that this was strength tested five times over that number in order to give it that number that it left to go out into the field. Again, because they know when it's out in the field, it's going to take a beating. So you're working low limit for this particular shackles, eight and a half tons. So that's what that says. 17,000 pounds. All right. 16 down to down. Yeah. So 17,000 pounds. This is the shackle can handle. So we were strength tested five times over that in order to come up with that design or safety factor. It goes well. Again, it's an arbitrary number. So they just kept breaking them and breaking them, breaking them. And that seemed to be the cutout point for it. So that was why they gave it that working low limit of eight and a half tons. But again, just so you could actually see and put it on there. That's the main purpose of this today is just to show. These are the most common cranes that are used. This is the most common rigging that's used out in the business today. All right. Here's that sling tension. The angle I talked about. I always just keep it simple. That's the thing that we just looked at. It's good. This wire rope sling was good for 22,000. Now, if I had it vertical like this, but as soon as I brought them both in to a crane hook, now I'm losing, you know, 25% capacity. But I'm also putting 25% extra attention on these slings because now I have tension coming in on an angle. And the biggest theory and the biggest way to remember is, is the lower the sling angle. As you see it like this, the lower the sling angle that you go with it, the greater the tension. So, by the time you get down to this one on the right, if it looks like a coat hanger. Then, you know, you got some world class tension going on that. And just to show you in a diagram how much it is after engineering and they put pull test on it and put gauges on both slings and then hook it back over. You can see at a 30 degree angle, you know, how much weight is actually on there. So, you're actually each sling leg is carrying the weight of the actual piece that you're picking. All right. This video, I'm only going to show you a short clip of this. Basically, it just shows you how they test the rigging at the factory before it comes down to the field. Again, as a crane operator, if I see brand new hooks, you see something red that's shiny and red. It's the safety latch actually stops where it's supposed to. The throat hasn't been stretched open because a lot of times you'll see them when they've been stretched open. This safety latch don't even catch anymore. Another big thing I always look for is down here in the valley of the hook. I'll see if that shiny red paint has been cracked apart because obviously when it starts bending and moving, it cracks all that new paint off. So, when I see a crack down here in this area, then I know, you know, it's already had a rough life. So, working load limit for them. This one's a little bit quick video too. And I just, again, I just like to show this one because this is just the sun, just the sun beating on one of those slings. They're going to give you the strength, the capacity of this sling when it was brand new. And then let the sun fade it and beat it up a little bit. And you can just see real quick. We'll only show a couple of these. Like I said, I want to keep moving forward so I can. So, 13-3 is our number there, correct? So, when this first started in a basket configuration, okay, minimum breaking strength, okay, Vertica, in a basket, all right, so 44,000 is when it's brand new in a basket, and now we cut loose at 13-3, I believe it was, so, and again, that's just from the sun beating on this and taking away the strength. So, like I said, all these little things about the salt deteriorating it, the sun being wet, being dry, and then the sun fading it all out, just to show you how much strength and capacity it really does take away from it. So, this sling could actually be perfectly fine, no nicks, cuts, or gouges in anything, but just the fact that, excuse me, just the fact that the sun faded it out and did everything, it just, it reduces capacity that much. This one, they actually do put little slices in the rigging, an eighth-inch little rip, a three-eighths rip, a half-inch rip in it, and a cut, just to see when it's gonna cut apart on there. And just to show you, if you do get a break in something, again, Vertica, it's good for 4,824, and that one came up best, so, all right, minimum breaking strength, okay, 24,000. And, again, they'll do this for every one, they'll go to this for every one, so they'll do it for an eighth-inch, they'll do it for three-eighths, and then they'll do it a half-inch, just to show, you know, if you do get a piece of rigging that did have a little cut in it, it was burned a little, and it frayed back that much, and these are actually brand-new slings with a cut, so you can only imagine with something that has a, an eighth-inch cut, or a three-eighths, or a half-inch cut, and sun-faded, and it was left out, it's got grease or some kind of solvent on it, so you know that's gonna break even sooner than what that number was, so, basically, they're just showing you where the limitations are, again, with all the rigging. All right, with this particular one, with this slide here, this is one of the jobs I was on, and, again, this is the same style slings that we saw on that first video, okay, this bridge beam I was picking was 155 feet long, it was 10 foot tall, it was 16 foot tall when we get to the arch ones at the end, and they weighed 216,000 pounds apiece, that was with my rigging, the beams, and everything else, so, basically, I just, again, just to give you, from the day of an operator, when I got there that day, and they said, hey, we're gonna pick this, I need you to walk that 2250 over to get yourself set up wherever you wanna be, the ground was real soft, so I asked them for mats, I talked to the signal person and found out who's gonna be the guy giving me signals, I talked to the riggers, I asked them, hey, what are you guys thinking, what's going on, what do we got, how are you hooking it up? So, we hung all the slings from the crane hook, and they burned holes through, and they put lifting lugs in there, they were great, because they had ears on the side that wouldn't let the sling slip off, and I know it's a little hard to see for everybody, but inside there, we talked about softeners earlier, and how they play such a critical part in the whole lift, this is just a piece of 4-inch PVC, all we did was cut a slice down one side of it, and shoved it on the top of the beam, and forced it on, it stayed right there, so, something as simple as a piece of PVC can save you from making the paper, or having an accident, or having a near miss like we had on that first video. So basically, with these, we added every leg was set up the same way, PVC on this one, PVC on the bottom, each one of my slings were from Slingmax, was the manufacturer of them, we went overkill, because we knew it was $216 for this, so, each one of these, in that vertical, and then we lost about 25%, because we were going on a 60-degree angle, so they were good for $80,000 a piece, so, 1, 2, 3, 4, so, in that setup, we were good for 320,000 pounds, so I knew we had plenty of rigging to handle everything that we were going to do, and again, basic questions, the ground, how was the ground, I had to walk up on mats, but basic questions like where am I going with this beam, because you got a 155-foot-long beam, where am I going with it after I get it off the top of the bridge, so, just basic questions like that, that's all part of the stuff that goes at that pre-lift meeting before you go to pick something like this, and it wasn't a critical lift, but it was a critical lift, because critical lifts aren't based just on weight apiece and everything, it could be a tricky situation for the crane to get in there, or it might have to maneuver it through something, or maneuver through some objects, so, I truly feel a critical lift is based on a complexity of the lift that you're going to make, the area you got to do it in, it doesn't always have to be just the weight of it, a critical lift can be determined by yourself, the company might consider it a critical lift, just because of where you had to go with it after you picked it, so, again, it all depends on the job site and the scenario, the biggest thing that was kind of crazy about this job for me, and just to give you the real life, I was piecing this bridge apart, picking those beams one at a time, and then pick all these little struts that are in the center, one at a time, and bring everything down, and the company hired another company when we got down to the water, the bridge, and they said, we'll pick the whole span by itself, you don't have to worry about piecing it apart, you do the land down to the water, and we'll take it from there, and I just wanted to show everybody this crane that came in there, because it was pretty impressive to watch, they brought this crane in, my crane, again, was a 300-ton crane, but obviously I had 240 feet of boom in it, so it wasn't good for 300 tons, obviously, we talked about it earlier, because of the limitations, they brought this crane in, it was a 1,000-ton derrick, that whole pier, that whole, picture this whole section of bridge, 155 foot long with concrete, walkways, everything attached, each one, it weighed 640,000 pounds, and this guy came in and said, I'll pick everything right there, you just, you leave it right there, I just, I said, oh, man, I'm going to watch this unfold, and he picked all the ones going over the water like that, and instead of having counterweight on the back of the crane, like I had to balance everything out, these barges and water rigs are a little bit different, they flood the back out of the barge out to an estimated, to where they'll sit in the water level, when they have all 640,000 pounds hanging from the crane, not attached to anything anymore. Excuse me. This guy had been with this crane for 20-plus years, hopped up on there, he was more than welcome to be, hey, come on up on the crane, and you can see how this whole thing unfolds and all that, and it was pretty neat to see it firsthand, right from the cab where he was looking at, and watching them flood the thing out, because this thing was damn near out of the water in the front, just to compensate for how much this was going to bring it back down once he had the full weight of the 640,000 pounds, so it was just one of them things you don't get to see too often right up close, and when I'm out in the field, so it was pretty cool to be part of that. Got a couple of pictures here at the end, and then one more video, with this particular picture. All right, we talked a lot about them, this whole section up there. What's wrong with this picture? Guys don't mind chatting on there one more time. Strap is twisted. I like it. I like it. Pamela, I like it. No softeners. Very good. Nobody underneath the load. I like it. Everybody's throwing out great answers. Yep, workers in close proximity. There's a lot of stuff when you're hooking up rigging according to the standards. The only people involved that close to the load are the guys that are actually involved with the hooking up of rigging and all that. Yep, twisted strap. I love it. That ID tag that's on the slings, again, we always try to keep that up by the crane hook, keep that away from the business end of everything. We never want that down so it doesn't get ruined or ripped off, because if it gets ripped off, that rigging is no good. If Oshie was to come out on the job, you know, that's a citation for not having. But again, everybody had great answers there. Safe distance. Yep. So everything here. No softeners here. You're just begging for something to happen here. The twisted strap. That was a great answer. Somebody brought up too. I like everything. I can't see the way it is up in there, but they'll tell you flat out that the eye of the sling must be sitting flat in there. It can't be twisted up in there. They want it sitting flat on the hook. They don't want it bunched up on top of each other. The other slings. Great answers, everybody. And this, like I said, you don't go anywhere near that load. The crane itself has a fall zone that they call it, and they want you to stay clear of all that stuff. About these two geniuses, everybody. What are you seeing wrong here? I can't see. Yep, exactly. Everybody's in the fall zone again. They're actually in the fall zone of the crane, too, so the crane's right behind them, so it should, should some, should this fall and something goes south if he started booming down. That boom's coming right at him, too. Again, I don't know where this plan is, but if something goes south, there might be two openings for a job there if something goes south on these guys. Again, don't ever, they don't ever get under there. That's why they made tag lines, so you could stand clear of everything. Yep, good answer again, panel. Now, you see, I can't see the shackles and the rigging enough, but again, this is why you got tag lines to stay away. All right, if you had to get to something like this, this is, okay, I'm going to get some dunnage. We're going to block this thing up so we can lower it back down, but keep the crane on there to keep tension, then go under there and take a look at that and see what you got. See what you got to fix or you got to adjust something, and again, you're on a job. You just want to get done. I mean, who knows if this didn't happen at the end of the day when they were just, hey, we wanted to set one more piece because that's the way it happens. That particular bridge job that I was on, the wind would rip underneath of those bridges, almost like a wind tunnel, and as the later in the day it went, the wind would kick up even more. Now, you got a hundred and, 155 feet long, 216,000, and I had some of the dock builders say, hey, we want to get one more piece, and the scenario was a Friday afternoon. It was perfect. I said, I'm not making the paper for this, but they said, oh, we're going to get extra dock builders to help you hold, and I just told them, no, it ain't happening. I said, we'll get it on Monday, but it was a big hoopla. They went and got everybody, and we didn't pick it. I just, I started wrapping up the crane for the day. I was like, no, we're done. I'll catch you on Monday, but, you know, you're not stopping a 216,000 pounds when it starts to rotate with the wind, so. I got you, Eileen. I'm almost done, so. All right, you see what's wrong with this picture? This is that complacency I talked about earlier. We get a little lazy. What if we had to set this crane up four or five different times on a job they wanted us to move? If you're looking at this, the state, yep, the outrigger pad pushed right into the ground. It only takes a minute. Very good. Sandy, soft ground. Very good. So, with that being said, as soon as you see sandy or soft ground, you know we're going to need dunnage and blocking underneath these outrigger pads. All right, when you get something like this and it pushes right in, it's a recipe for disaster, and I'm looking at the turret of this crane, and that boom is actually facing this way, so he's picking and setting something over on this side, so, again, this is just, you get a little complacent, get a little lazy. These pieces aren't that heavy. Ain't so much about that piece ain't that heavy. You might luck out just in this area. The fact you keep booming down and booming down, booming down, putting more of the weight of that boom out over that side, now you're creating a danger right there, so it has nothing to do with the weight of the piece. The next one, again, we're human. I'm not looking to pick everything we do apart, but this particular job, we ran up and down this highway quite a few times with this, and sometimes bad things just happen to good people. He just, he found the one weak spot in the concrete. Now, this crane is, you know, for almost two weeks, been run up and down this highway, that one of the bridges that we were putting together, and for some reason, he found the weak spot that day, and that's one of the things that I just chalk it up to. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. This particular thing, me as an operator being in the business, the only thing I can think of on this is when they pour concrete, there's a vibrator that's connected to hydraulics that they drop down into the concrete, and it helps solidify it and force it to go down. That might have been one area where maybe when they had that vibrator going, they missed that area, or they didn't really push it too much to let it liquefy, so that's the only thing I could think of there, that they just had one soft spot in, and this poor guy wound up finding it, so again, sometimes bad things really do happen to good people. All right, the last one is just a quick video, and again, this is, you know, sometimes when rigging breaks and stuff like that, you got no control of it, especially when you're doing everything, and you're within the capacities of that rigging, and in the capacities of that, the crane, as far as what it can pick, sometimes bad stuff just happens. It's a shame that it happens, especially when someone gets hurt or killed in it, but I mean, it does happen in the business that we're in. Bring you updates as they come in. In the meantime, check out this scary situation in southeast Austin this morning. It shows a construction crane toppling over onto workers. Luckily, everyone survived, but two went to the hospital with injuries. KXAN's Phil Prezen live. Where it all happened, Phil? Robert, Raymond Construction is building a large warehouse here in south Austin at 2301 St. Elmo's. Take a look behind me. You can still see in the distance the large truck crane is laying flat after it fell over while putting up those large concrete tilt walls you can see right next to it, and you can see in the video sent to us, the rigging on that wall broke. That sent several workers scattering, and then the crane collapses. The Austin Fire Department I can tell you the scariest part about doing tip-ups, all this is they poured a slab that you see here, and then they pour each section of the walls that you're going to stand up, and they're usually laying right here. All right, this one they might have been trucking in or they're pouring in a different location, but when you stand these up, when you first start one of these jobs, you have like a lead corner that you're starting, so the only thing holding up that concrete, it always feels better when you get the concrete up and you get them tied into each other as you get going, but when you have the first one standing up there by itself, and you just have the support rods holding it like you see in the back, or you have the first corner in those, well I'll tell you it's a good feeling when you finally start to get the wall and everything's starting to connect to each other, but you always pray you don't have no win when that single one's standing up there by itself, all right, when you just start that lead corner of the warehouse. On to this emergency call around 9 a.m., but when nobody dies, they hand the investigation over to the Federal Occupation Safety and Health Administration, OSHA. They are on the scene now according to AFD. Now I reached out to the Central Texas Director of Raymond Construction. He says that they are investigating themselves into what caused the accident, and then what were the circumstances around on the construction site could have contributed to it, and then coming up at 6, I'm talking to a crane accident investigator to find out what he thinks happened, and then what could have prevented it as well. Live in South Austin, Phil Prezen, KSAN. Bring you updates. All right, that's going to take care of my section here, and I appreciate everybody's time. Does anybody have any questions about anything as far as the cranes go before we take a short break here? Yes? No? Maybe? Hey Keith, can you comment on the way loads are handled on a barge versus on land, and how does that really impact capacity? If you do, when they're on a barge, basically the load chart that comes with the crane, a load chart you get to a crane is based off a firm level ground that's underneath you, okay? When you get on a barge, now you're working off a list chart now, obviously, because you don't have firm ground behind you or underneath you, so now there's a whole equation that you have to do with this, and it usually goes with the manufacturer of the barge, the barge's dimensions, length, width, how deep it is, and then it'll go back to the engineer or the crane manufacturer, and they'll come up with another load chart now, because they know they don't have that stability underneath them anymore. The ones I've dealt with over the years, I usually have to cut, it comes out, I usually cut my load chart in half of what I could usually pick, again, because the chart, when it's, when the crane's tested at the factory, and to where it could, you know, it's going to refuse a load, or where it's going to break when you see them test it in, because they do the same thing with the crane, everybody, that you saw with that rigging. They're going to, they're going to have another crane tied off to it, and they'll go and pick it and test these cranes until the boom collapses and folds underneath of it, but to answer your question, Jason, yeah, there's a whole lot of formula and math that goes in there, and every one I've ever done comes out to cutting my load chart damn near in half of what it can do when it's on firm and level ground. Like I said, the barge plays, the barge plays the big part in everything, again, dimensions of the barge, how much it can handle, its strength rating for everything, so there's, they call it a list chart, is what you'll get for it afterwards, once you're on the barge, so, and I can tell everybody that's in attendance, when you have to walk a crane from ground onto a barge the first time, it's sitting on water, it's probably the most scariest experience I've ever had as a crane operator, so once you get on the barge, you are so thankful you're on the barge once you get on there, because you're going from land to water, and that barge starts sinking down in front of you, you don't ever stop, keep right on going, keep them tracks going, keep pulling that barge into you as you're walking, so again, the scariest thing I've ever done, so just getting a crane on the barge, but I appreciate everybody's time, and we're going to take a little break here and get ready for my man Ty. Do you want to take a five minute or a ten minute? Ty, what do you got buddy? Yeah, it doesn't make a difference, Keith, I can go five or ten, whatever the audience wants to do, I see someone in the audience, Teresa, saying ten, so let's take ten. Great job, Keith, thank you, man. Yeah, thank you guys, man. You got it, Mark, ten minutes it is, buddy. You Bye-bye. If you all want to engage your webcams for the last module, that's fine. And I think we are ready to go whenever you are ready. All right. So we're going to get started. Keith, thanks again for doing such an excellent job on educating us on rigging, what to do at the job site, what you go through on a daily basis as a crane operator. That was an excellent job. It was definitely educational and it kind of teed us up to get to this point of the presentation where we're at with regards to trying to show the audience a case study, but also what happens when things go wrong and also some best practices. So I'm going to get started right here, guys. But again, thank you, Keith. Yeah, buddy. Thank you. Okay. There it is. Hit it too quick. All right. So just to tee this off, we have a tower crane collapse that occurs while the building is under construction. This is an accident that occurred in New York City, Manhattan, on the east side of Manhattan. As you can see on the screen, we got seven people, I don't know why it says 12, there's actually only seven people that actually passed away. So that is incorrect. So our apologies there. There were seven fatalities, six of them construction workers. One was a civilian. We had a dozen or so injured. We also had numerous buildings that were damaged. I believe several buildings were damaged, not to mention one townhome that was also damaged. A young lady passed away within this particular accident. But on top of all that, we also had a huge first-party property loss to the crane itself. So you got all these things that took place as a result of this unfortunate accident with regards to trying to erect this tower crane, trying to get a building under construction, the building itself, the initial building plans called for a 40-story luxury apartment on the east side of Manhattan. It's going to be 40 stories. The developer later decided that we're going to scale up, we're going to go up to 44 stories. We want to have an apartment building that can hold a max residence of about 117 units. So this building was getting taller as the construction was going on, and just the change in the plans, luckily that we didn't get to the level of which they initially intended at the start of this accident because it could have been even worse. So here's the facts, basically. We got a tower crane that's under construction going up again east side of Manhattan. As you can see here, this is the mast of the crane itself. Because it is a tower crane, and Keith alluded to this earlier, when you get into those confined spaces, usually a tower crane is probably the best option because its footprint is much smaller, even though the boom section here can extend out pretty far to gather materials, move materials around, the base of the crane itself has a small footprint, so we can get it in a confined space, which we know Manhattan is. So the workers are in the process of erecting this tower crane, and what they're doing here is once you erect this structure here, given the size of it, given the height of it, as we all know naturally as the height of a building or any type of surface, as it gets higher in height, you need stability. So what the engineers do in order to stabilize this mast during the erection process is they will engineer a steel support collar, which will be erected around the mast of the tower crane itself. That particular collar will then be attached to this brace strut, they'll pin it, they'll connect it to the brace strut right here, that brace strut will tie right into the cement slab of the building itself, giving this mast here lateral support to keep it obviously from falling, because otherwise you've got a freestanding structure. So in the process of actually, again, erecting this tower and trying to attach this collar around the mast of the crane, the workers begin to A, they hoist up the collar, it's a 12,000 pound collar, let's stop there. They hoist this collar up by the boom of the crane itself. So they hoist it here, they're bringing it up in the air. Once they get it to the 18th floor level, now the process of actually attaching it to the mast itself begins. So what they'll do is once they get it here by the hoist itself, they'll take a tagline, and Keith talked about that earlier, where they'll have a tagline that maneuvers whatever's being lifted, they can maneuver it around to get it close to its intended place. The workers here, they hoist it, the collar by the hoist here, they get it close enough to the mast as they can, they take a tagline, they move it over closer to the mast, and then what they'll do is they'll suspend the collar itself by nylon straps, nylon rigging straps that are actually choked around the mast of the tower itself. Looks like somebody's having audio issues. So they'll get this collar here, get it around the mast, and once it's bolted to the mast itself, they then can attach this brace strut, which again, ties into the cement slab of the building. Sounds like we're having technical difficulties. Some people are only here to, okay, somebody, Eileen said it's fine. We can hear you loud and clear, man. You sound good on this. My apologies. I'm looking at the screen and I'm seeing someone saying they're having technical difficulties. So let me go on. So again, guys, collar here goes around the mast of the crane because we need to support this freestanding structure. They tie it in to the slab of the building itself. In the process of lifting that collar, unfortunately, the collar breaks through the synthetic straps itself. As it breaks through the straps, this 12,000 pound collar falls down the mast, free falls down the mast, takes out the collar at the ninth floor level, severs the lateral supports, which is the brace struts here, to it, then again, it's to begin to free fall again with two collars. Now you've got 24,000 pounds of steel that's free falling down this collar, subsequently ending on the third floor collar here. We all know that if you've got that type of weight coming down, free falling down an object like this here, the shock load itself that's going to go up the mast of this crane is going to create a very, very unstable situation, not to mention that this brace strut, because the collar free falls from here, taking out this brace strut here, you have less lateral support to this structure as well. In all, what eventually happens is all of these struts, these brace struts sever, except the one down here, the tower itself goes over, slams into the building next door, okay, before the actual superstructure of this particular tower separates from the bottom portion of the mast. So you've got a serious accident going on here, guys. And just to give you some background here, these two braces right here were initially installed by a mobile crane. Keith talked about this earlier. Sometimes they'll use an assist crane or sister crane to help with the installation of an erection of a crane. It's a tower crane itself. What they did here is they had a sister crane or an assist crane to go ahead and lift these collars in place, one here on the third floor level, another here on the ninth floor level. What they did different here at the 18th floor level, and which they've never done before on this particular job, is they decided, we're going to lift this collar by the crane itself. We'll get it up in the air up here, and then we'll use nylon slings, which will choke around the mast itself to be able to support the collar while they begin to bolt it onto the mast itself. So you got 12,000 pounds of steel that's being held on by the synthetic slings here, wrapped around, or I should say, choked around a metal surface of the crane itself, the mast of the crane itself. Keith touched on this, I believe, three or four times. When you do have a synthetic sling that's going up against a sharp metal surface, the first thing you want to do is you want to have a softener on there to protect that sling. Unfortunately, these guys, I don't know if they were rushing. Again, it was the first time that they were actually using the boom of the crane to lift this collar in place. Again, they suspended it from the mast itself, from slings. Those slings wrapped around or choked around this particular brace, subjects the sling to being severed, and that's what actually happened in this particular loss. You got a nylon string against a metal surface, and you got 12,000 pounds of weight on it. And again, at this time, this collar is not physically connected to the mast here. It's just being suspended by these slings to hold it in place while the workers are actually trying to bolt it onto the mast itself, subsequently bolt it onto the brace strut, and then tie it into the building slab here. So it severs that because of the strings being choked around that metal surface, severs it again. These collars, again, free fall down the mast, severing each support brace here before it actually goes over into the building. Huge loss, guys. In seven fatalities, six of the workers were actually on the mast of the crane itself. Six construction workers were on the mast of this crane when it went over. Unfortunately, they lost their lives in this incident. There was a civilian that was in a nearby apartment, and I'll show you some pictures of that as well, who also lost her life in this, again, this superstructure here, slams into two other buildings itself. So just to give you guys some more information, this crane at this juncture before the loss is approximately 250 feet in the air. And again, the building owner initially wanted to go 40 stories. He later changed it to go to 44 stories. Had he gone to 44 stories, we're talking about doubling the increase of the height of this crane to almost 500 feet. Fortunately, it didn't get that far. It only got to 250 level. Again, it then goes over, slams into a couple of buildings. This superstructure here, somersaults. Because once this goes over and hits the building next door, okay, this superstructure, the jib, which is about 120 foot of long boom, severs from the mast of the crane itself. It somersaults, honestly, a block down the road into another building. So that's something that's very, very, very significant. The operator, unfortunately, is in the cab when this severs from the mast of this crane. Again, he perished as well, being up in the cab and the other workers, construction workers who were on the mast of the crane perished as well. So once it all goes over, it's just a mess at that point, safe to say. You got tons of property damage. You got a fatality to civilians as well, to one civilian as well, and it's just a complete mess. Now, the authorities are trying to come out there to sort through, how did this all happen? How do we get down to what caused this loss? What's the causation? And the causation here, unfortunately, is a synthetic sling that's holding a 12,000 pound collar that's choked around a metal surface without its protection. That being said, that's a formula for tearing or sharing of the slings itself, which then results in the collar being dropped and free-falling down the mast of the crane, subsequently resulting in the tower going over into other buildings. Wanted to give you guys some photos, some real-life photos of actually what occurred here. So you can see in this photo here, these are the collars, all right, that does a better job than the actual diagram itself, but these are the collars once they fall down to the third level. So this was the top one that was at the 18th floor. Again, it's 12,000 pounds. This is the one that's nine stories below. Again, another 12,000, you got 24,000 pounds free-falling down the mast of that crane. It all slams down onto this third collar, which is at the third floor level, shock-loading the crane itself, causing the crane to go over. But there, here, as you can see, where those straps severed. This device here was the come-along device and the chain fall. That device is used to bring the collar closer to the mast of the crane itself and also help them to line it up and balance it for when they go in and start to set the actual brace strut onto the collar itself. That device can be manually cranked to be able to move that particular collar in place. And just to give you guys an idea of how sharp these metal edges are, if you look at the edges of this particular tower itself, you got the straps that are actually going to be... And I don't even know why they decided to do it this way. I'm not an engineer, far from it. But when you choke a synthetic strap around a metal surface like that, that's that sharp, and you got 12,000 pounds here for that collar, it's just a formula for tearing. And unfortunately, that's what occurred. But I just wanted to give you guys a close-up as to how sharp these edges are and how actually these rigging slings actually failed. Now, there were four slings in total, and I'll show you a photo of that as well as we go on. But just wanted to give you guys a close-up on what it looks like at the end and how sharp those edges were. And Keith couldn't stress it enough during his segment, how important it is to actually have a softener on these particular straps to prevent it from an abrasive edge and shearing. Just that one step, I don't want to call it a little step because these guys, they're out there every day, they know what they're doing, it's just human error, but that one step probably would have prevented this loss from happening in the first place. So here is some photos of the rigging itself, and as Keith alluded to earlier, over time, these straps, they get beat up. You can take a look at these and see how beat up these straps are. They come in fresh, you got to inspect them before you actually use the crane itself. That's an OSHA regulation that there has to be a visual inspection of the actual rigging slings that are going to be used with that piece of equipment. You want to do it at each shift and you got to check, as Keith alluded to earlier, you want to check for deficiencies, whether it's kinking, whether it's unbraiding or unstranding, is there a core failure, is there a corrosion, all of those things they should have checked for prior to using these straps itself, but again, the failure in of itself was a matter of not having a softener around these straps against the metal edge, which then shears them and unfortunately, the load then releases from the rigging itself and free falls down the mast of the crane. Hey, Todd, you got it right there, buddy. You can see in a basket, like the stuff that we talked about earlier, how the ID tag on the rigging for everybody, you see it down on that bottom right picture, a vertical's good for 64, it chokes 5,000 and a basket's good for 12,800. So you got two of those slings basketed, so just to hold one collar, so Ty said the collar was what, 12,000 pounds, pal? Correct. Yeah, so they were well within the strength, so you got two of them, so you're good for what, 12,800, 12,000, 24,000, I mean, you're a little bit touching under 26,000 pounds between the slings, but you know, the strength of the sling definitely wasn't the issue here, it was that softener and being on a sharp edge like that, but they were doing it, they were within capacity doing the right thing, it's just, hey, you got to take everything into consideration. Sorry, buddy. Keith, you make a great point and you know, it's just a matter of human error, the way they configured the straps around the legs of the crane itself, you got that, it's a nylon material, even though it has strength capacity, you just put it on a sharp edge, it's going to give eventually and it could have been prevented again if they had those softeners in place. Ty, we do have a question in the chat room, somebody asked, who was ultimately responsible for ensuring the correct processes are in place? Yeah, good question, and Keith, you might be able to help me out with this, I'm going to try and correct me if I'm wrong. You have a number of parties that are in place on a crane lift, you got the lift director, you got the site supervisor, and those two individuals can be one and the same under the B30 standards, which is the crane standard. So those two individuals can be one of the same. You got those guys, you got the site supervisor, lift director, who is responsible for making sure the rigging crew knows what they're doing, knows what their tasks are doing. But you also probably, you probably have, and you will have, an assembly, a disassembly director out there as well. So you got multiple levels of supervision that's out there. The liability itself can be transferred, I believe, to both site supervisor, lift director, as well as the master rigger themselves, but also the assembly, disassembly director, he's out there, or she's out there, whether it's a male or female, they're out there watching how this thing is being bolted together. They should step up and say something as well. So there's a number of parties that can be held responsible. That's why it's really important to understand what the standards say. Keith touched on that a little bit earlier, there's specific standards. You got OSHA regulations, but you also have industry standards. And this case is the B30 standard. And there's one for tower cranes, there's one for mobile cranes. But those standards delineate the responsibility of the parties during a crane lift. And we like to use that actually as a tool to be able to assign liability, because once you get the facts and you find out what the role of an individual is under the standard, now you can assign liability as to who's responsible for what. So to answer that question, Jason, or to the audience, there's multiple parties that are held responsible for this. The liability is going to be transferred to a number of parties, at least to say, Keith, please elaborate if you'd like to. No, I mean, you hit everything, you hit the nail on the head. I mean, I know when we jumped everything, we always had one of the supers, the lift director, and then depending if the crane was a newer crane, it had a different sequence to climb and everything. We'd actually have one of the reps from Libair or Morrow, whoever's crane, the actual crane owner was, one of the techs would come out just to make sure and tell us, hey, we got this process going here, they got a different way they want to do it. But yeah, but now you hit everything on the head, especially with the lift director. He's the one that's assigning the guys that are supposed to know this process in and out. So that's just, I mean, it's obvious there, they just, they cut some corners. And you know what? I can't even say that. They might've done this before in the past and they never had an issue, but this time they did. Yeah. And Keith, you bring up a great point there, I just want to touch on it. You mentioned the factory technician that comes out from the crane manufacturer itself. So you can have an assembly, disassembly director out there, but you also want someone from the factory out there as a technician. So you make a great point there and I just wanted the audience to hear that as well. So great. Thank you. I do appreciate it. Oh yeah, absolutely. But they know the crane. So that was, I always liked when they came out because they know, they know the crane, they know to process the best compared to anybody out there. So, yeah. So you guys can see clearly the way the straps severed, these straps are obviously beat up, but at the end of the day, it comes down to, you put a nylon strap against an abrasive metal surface and unfortunately you had a lot of weight on it and although the straps would have maintained had that softener been on there, unfortunately the metal surface got the best of it and tore it through and unfortunately we get the loss. Got a poll question here. So we've talked about this pretty much throughout this presentation because we think it's, we know it's important. I don't want to say we think it's important, it is important. What small addition, what small addition to the rigging would have prevented this accident? And we'll just give the attendees time to answer. Great answers, guys. 93% said softeners. I think we stressed it enough here, but you know, even though we've stressed it a lot in this presentation, it happens. It happens on jobs all the time. Guys are rushing and they just forget, you know, human error. Forget to put it on, put a softener over the strap to protect it. And again, this lift, I got to give the guys credit here, the riggers, as well as everyone involved, you know, they changed systems. As I mentioned earlier, they started out with mobile cranes, installing the first two levels of collars. And then they decided at the very end, when they got to that 18th floor level, that we're going to use the crane itself. So just that change in process can throw anyone off and you just forget things. It's human error. The next poll question, what change did New York City issue after this accident? Give the audience some time to respond. See Mark responding as well. Looks like we've got some more people responding, so I'll give it a few minutes. Okay. I see a lot of the audience said rigor qualification refreshes every year. That's a great answer, but the actual correct answer is C, why a rope slings are used when erecting a tower. Here's the difference here. You got a synthetic sling, which can easily be cut when it's on a metal surface, whereas if you use a wire rope itself, you might get a little bit more strength there and less susceptible to getting shed against a metal surface. But also then, I think Keith mentioned it earlier, you can still put some protection around that wire rope itself. So the correct answer there was definitely you want to use wire ropes instead of a sling when it comes down to erecting these tower cranes. There's a question in there, Ty. Okay, sorry. Hold on one second. Let me just scroll back up. So our apologies to the audience. If one of us touches a dial, the screen will move on us. So we're trying to coordinate this. So my apologies there. You were trying to get to something, Keith? Yeah, there was a question. A softener is a critical component of ringing. Would the lack of this equipment be excluded on the coverage forms? It's not. Using the AAIS forms is our basis of coverage. It is not excluded from the coverage form. So again, this is something that, you know, to the underwriters that are out there, it's something that maybe it's good to add to a supplemental application. Or if you do come across this sort of exposure, this is something that you want to question your retail agent on or subsequently your insurance as far as best practices and really getting an idea of how they manage this process on an ongoing basis. Absolutely. So as you guys can see on the screen there, we got some photos that we wanted to show you all with regards to how the tower fell, with regards to how it's still intact here at this level here. I got a better picture here. I'll show you in a bit where this is a tie-in brace right here that I talked about earlier, where this particular, this tie-in brace here will tie into the slab of the building itself. The collar is pinned and connected to that tie-in base as well. So that's the only one that actually sustained the load. However, if this wasn't there, if this tie-in wasn't into the slab of the building, this entire crane, this entire one's going over. And I definitely believe if it had gone fully over, it would have took out that building, which was next door. Some more photos that are going to come up in just a moment. Keith, I got a delay on my end. Can you switch that screen, please? All right. Yeah, great photo. So as I mentioned just now, there's the tie-in beam here at the third floor level. It didn't give it. It held in place. We got the collars on top of it. We see that that third floor collar was still connected to the tie-in beam. So that's the only thing holding this crane up from really taking out the building next door, which you'll see in the next couple of slides. Hey, Ty, can I just say one more thing to everybody? You got a couple of different ways how they do this with a climber on the outside of the building. Or, you know, a lot of times I've been part of where we would put it in the center of the building where the elevator would be before they put the elevator in. And you actually use the elevator shaft for the tower and all. That way you got 360 swing all right around the building. And then once we're done, we'll pull the crane out of the center, and then they'll put the elevator in for everything. But there's a couple of different ways that they can do this instead of attaching it to the outside of the building, or you could use the elevator shaft. But in this one, they might have had the elevator already done, and they were using it to run lighter supplies up to all the different floors. So just so you know, there's a couple of different processes for the towers. So we mentioned how the tower fell. We know that the lower portion of the mast of the crane struck this building here, as I mentioned earlier in that last photo. I think if I'm of the opinion that if those tie-in beams were to give way, this probably would have came down with more force, possibly would have took this building out. But again, the lower portion of the towers here, as I mentioned earlier, the superstructure, which had the cab, 120 foot of boom, that was also on top, somersaults down a block down the road and takes out another building. So horrific, at least to say. Just giving you another view. You got, there was a building here, guys. So unfortunately, that section of the mast just slices through this building. Wow. And these towers, you know, I would have to guess, you know, maybe $2 million, probably $3 million piece of equipment. So that's a first party property loss. That's huge on the last one I've been insured. So that's a lot going on. Got some more photos for you all. Just another view there, where you can see the windows are still left here, a piece of them here of this building. It totally just flattened this building out and just took it out, at the very least. Debris, I said this the other day to the team here is no one can ever tell me that a one of these mini Cooper's doesn't have enough cargo space. It's horrific, just the debris that's left over and the damage this again, this accident could have been much worse. Vehicle sitting outside, fortunately, no one was in there at the time, but just a mess here. And again, I can't stress it enough. This was this was intended to be a 40 story luxury apartment building. The developer decided to go with 44 stories. They only made it to the floor. The cranes at 250 feet tall, had they went up further, we got even more of a traffic loss than what we have here. And here's the response. Again, unfortunately, we we lost seven individuals in this accident. It's just horrific. Now, I will tell you this, just some post investigation facts that I got written down here for myself, just to give you guys some ideas of what took place after the incident. Prior to the lost itself weeks leading up to the collapse, there was numerous complaints that was filed with the city department of building with regards to folks just fighting concerns about the safety of it. There was even one complaint that said that the crane itself appeared to not to be attached fully to the building. So, there was a number of complaints that took place leading up to the actual accident itself. The city did respond. They did petition a inspector to go out there to take a look at the crane prior again prior to the accident. The inspector allegedly went out there, did an inspection, filed a report in his report. He indicated that there were no safety violations that he could identify. Unfortunately, there probably were, but later discovery indicated that this particular inspector with the department of building never did the actual inspection itself. So, he falsified information. He was later arrested with regards to falsifying that information. The rigging company itself was charged with seven counts of manslaughter. Fortunately, they were later acquitted of the charges there, but that goes to show you how much of a concern this was for not only the members of New York City, but the Department of Building, the government, et cetera, to where you begin to file seven counts of manslaughter against a rigging company. Again, the owner of that company was later acquitted of the charges, so it is what it is at that point. The city building commissioner actually resigned post-accident, given that there had been, in that one year, there had been 26 fatalities related to construction in the city itself, so you got, you know, that's a lot that's going on. So, the city commissioner just, I guess, just fed up, decided to resign from his position. Two months later, another crane goes over in New York City, and unfortunately, it kills two more people, so there was a lot going on at this time. Again, two months later, another one goes over, kills two, and I think a few years later, they had another tower crane collapse that occurred in the city itself. So, with all those incidents occurring, the city made some big changes with regards to how tower cranes are installed. Certifications are very extensive now. As you saw in our first segment with the contract itself, it called for a master rigger to be on site to make sure the person out there that's looking at these things is qualified. They called for specific operators with specific certifications with regards to tower cranes, so there was a lot done in the aftermath to try to prevent these incidents from occurring, but this was just a flurry of crane collapses, specifically tower cranes, over a good five to six year span that was just occurring. I'm sure there's folks in the audience that heard about these things, and I'm sure the city was under unrest with regards to these cranes going over, because once they do go over, it is scary. It does create a catastrophe, and they're just big. It's a lot of metal that goes over, and they're heavy, so that's what it comes down to at the end of the day. Just really taking the time to do an inspection, I believe this accident could have been prevented had there been softeners, but also, if there was a visual inspection that was done to look at those traps to make sure they didn't have any deficiencies either prior to the loss, and then the configuration of that strap itself was just a bad call. You know, Ty, they did make a change to the age of the crane, too, that you couldn't bring a tower, because Cornell cranes down here in New Jersey always had the tower crane work in New York City, but their cranes are from the 80s. Old link belt buffers, so that was another thing that they added to all the licensing, or if you were going to bring a crane into the city, as it had to be a certain year now, they just wanted the newer stuff in there, and that goes all across the board for them, so I know Cornell lost all the work going into the city now. Yeah, so we showed you guys here in this segment what could go wrong and what did go wrong. We want to be able to show you all some best practices, so we do have a video coming up that can illustrate how a tower crane should be erected, and it's only one version of it. As Keith mentioned, there's other ways to erect it as well. They can use the elevator as well, but just a moment here. Keith, can you play? You got it. Here you go, buddy. Keith, I just wanted to pause it right there. I want the audience to see how they were bringing that collar up and if we can go back just a second here. I did notice that they are using wire rope to bring that up here. Go back just a second. I'm going to revert the panel to the mask itself. We are talking about the brace strut that is going to be pinned to this collar to tie it into the slab of the building itself. That's that coming on device to help line it up. I'm going to pause it there, Keith, because we are running tight on time. There are some questions that came in. I want to be able to answer those questions. I believe the audience got the gist of it here. This was a more effective way to go ahead and raise the collar in place, bolt it to the mast of the crane itself, and then tie it into the building slab to provide this structure here stability. There's the superstructure here. That's the part that went over and somersaulted down the block. You can see the counterweight here. Again, this is a luffer here. You can go vertically with this luffer here to go up and down, which is a little bit more useful in a tight situation versus the hammerhead style that you see in some other cities. I just wanted to give you guys a quick snapshot of what it looks like to actually install one of these cranes. There are some questions that came in. I want to get to those questions. If we can move on from here. I'm going to stop that video, Keith. Got to go back one. Sorry. Yeah, so yeah, I see the question just kind of disappeared from my screen here, but just around a modified GL policy and removing the CCC exclusion under the GL, would that be a good way to maybe address some of these rigors liability exposures? My opinion on that is absolutely. Very oftentimes, you will see a general liability policy set up to respond for rigors liability, which will also allow oftentimes, depending on how the access is structured, for increased limits to be purchased through the excess casualty lines. And so, yeah, you're dead on. Inland Marine can be a little bit more restrictive, again, just depending upon the coverage form and just recognizing what type of insurance that you have and what type of work is being performed. We did kind of start the top of this presentation off going over a couple of different coverage forms offered throughout the Inland Marine space. And subsequently, the presentation did go into more of a tower crane sort of exposure, but recognize that there's a plethora of ways and exposures that we have through rigors liability. We chose to drill down on a couple just for demonstration purposes, but really understanding what your insurers are doing. Again, via application, getting copies of the contract and making sure you really understand the scope of work and recognizing, you know, could you get away with an installation float or would that be best suited for a job? Or maybe even a rigors legal liability form. Again, just depending on the type of work that's going on, really meshing that up with your applications, what's on the contract. Understanding the scope of work you're insured is doing, and then kind of making a strategic decision from there is really how we took the approach on the presentation. But to kind of just circle back around to the question, absolutely. Oftentimes, you'll find that the rigors will run up not only through your primary GL, through any partner carrier, but then subsequently up through the excess casualty. It looks like we got another question here. And the question is from the audience. What happens when the counterweights need to be changed during the course of construction and how difficult a process is that? I'm going to defer to Keith on that. He's got the operator's time in the seat experience. So, Keith, could you help us out there? Most of the time, they don't change that like mid-process, but when you're putting the crane together, that goes into the factoring of what crane we're going to use for that job. Basically, when you start putting counterweights in and do all that stuff, depending on the crane that you're using, sometimes we'll have the assist crane in there that's going to be able to reach up there. With that particular style, with a luffer like that, we will actually boom that crane up. We might even boom it down in this case because we're putting it together because it's not heavy on the counter jib in the back. You kind of find a balance point with it. All right? And then as we put, we'll use an assist crane and bring up the counterweight to it and set that in place on the back of it. And then pretty much it's a balance game when we're doing all this. And the same process will do this when we go to jump the crane. All right? At the last part of that presentation, you saw a white frame on the outside of that tower mass section, and that's the climbing frame that's in there. Basically, they go back, I'm sorry, before I get off into something different there, but once you get everything balanced out with the counterweights, because they're usually put in place by the assist crane, but when we go to jump it is when we would have to deal with them again because of how much counterweight we got there. So, we'll pick up a weight. I think the one crane that we had a 357 lead there, we had to pick up, I think it was like 6,000 pounds, and we would have to balance that out, find a sweet spot balance-wise before we actually jumped and raised the crane up. So, once I got all the counterweight in the back, I'd find my sweet spot at what boom angle and how much weight I should suspend from the hook of the crane, find out where I'm balanced, put all my pins in, all my hydraulics are set up, then we jump and move the crane out. So, it's like a balancing act between it. There's procedures and all that for it, obviously, when they manufacture it, but yeah, you're really kind of balancing yourself out when you're doing it. Yeah, it looks like I saw something in the chat also from Catherine. The statement was, I noticed that the workers are tied with nylon straps. Those workers, they're on the frame of the crane itself or the mast of the crane itself. They are required to have fall protection, so they're going to be tied off, and unfortunately some of that fall protection is a nylon material. Oftentimes, you might see a rope around them as well, along with the actual fall protection gear, but it is nylon, but it's there for their safety so that protects them from falling off a high surface like that. It's got a little shock load at the end of it where that sling comes off of them for their fall protection. Kind of looks like a sling, and then at the end, it's kind of, it comes in and it's folded. The end of it is folded, then folded on top. So if they did fall, it actually rips the stitching and kind of takes the shock away from just being one straight sling that where they could really pull back on the guys. It would kind of scissor out where it's stitched together just to lessen the blow of a shock on somebody if they did fall before it caught them. Yeah, I see a question here from Caleb. It looks like he was asking about reporting requirements for rigorous coverage with some less than sophisticated accounting procedures. One of the things I would recommend, number one, if you can't get a copy of the financials, just depending on the size of the insured, and again, I know you kind of alluded to maybe some less than sophisticated accounting procedures, but that's always one way to get a gauge. The other thing is push your retail agent to get you on the phone with your insured so you can sit down and ask some really pointed questions. Just make sure you do your preparation on the front end. But any sort of CFO or safety guy should be able to provide, or owner, should be able to provide you some guidance on some of the questions that you're looking for. Again, obviously our responsibility as underwriters, we need to understand what we have in order to make some strategic decisions. So again, really lean on your retail agent to kind of help guide you in that process. Keith, I'd like to add to that as well. Even after you guys issue a policy, what we see on the risk management side is when we get a contract in that came in with a submission, even though the underwriter is taking a look at it, they're teaming up with us on the risk side to understand all of the language that's in the contract and what coverages need to be in place, what can we change, what can we modify in the contract to better protect the insured. Oftentimes myself, Keith, and a few others in our office, we still got to get on the phone with both the agent and the insured company to talk through that contract. So that way we get them what they actually need. Because oftentimes they're skilled at engineering and running cranes and rigging and stuff, but they're not as skilled at contract language. So we do have to have that conversation with them. To Jason's point, get a hold of the retailer or the wholesaler and see if you guys can talk through the process with the actual insured as well. I think we're out of time, guys. Yes. Thank you so much, Jason, Ty, and Keith, for an excellent class today. We really appreciate having access to your knowledge and your expertise today. We are now ready to do the final CE code. If you require CE credits in New York, Texas, or Georgia, if you did not also get a copy of your, see a copy of the fillable form that's included in the material section, you should have, well, you did receive prior to this event a link to get into the class today. There is a section at the bottom of that that says review materials, so that includes the CE form. So all you need to do is fill out that CE form and save it and then send it back to Allie. The second code is 1922. That's 1922. And the first code was 0125, today's date, 0125. So go ahead and save the form and then send it back to Allie, and that's for New York, Texas, or Georgia only. Okay, and then we just have a couple of quick, one, we have a trivia question. The first person to type into the chat the correct answer will receive a $25 Amazon gift card. What is the name of the smallest country in the world by area? And the area is 0.17 square miles. So what's the name of the smallest country in the world? Yep, perfect. We have a winner. That is Vatican City. And that was Eli. Oh wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Tyler Schultz. Tyler Schultz. Congratulations, Tyler. And then for most engaged or with best question, I know this is a really tall order because there was a lot of great engagement today with the attendees who were participating. Do you have anybody in mind? Keith, Ty, and Jason? Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that question. If not, I can help you. I jotted down some. Okay. Yeah, I think we were focusing more on the presentation. All the questions were great. There were a lot of fantastic questions today. And that will be Caleb. Caleb will be the winner of most engaged with best question. So congratulations, Tyler and Caleb. And with that, I just want to mention the survey. We really appreciate everybody's participation today. Please take a moment to complete the survey. It's included in the materials section right now. You can just click on that link or it will also be included in the follow-up email that you'll receive about an hour after the class today. So please take time to complete that survey. We want to know what works well and what we can improve upon. Thank you so much again, Ty, Keith, and Jason. This was a fantastic session today. We really appreciate it. And this ends today's class. Bye, everyone. Thanks, guys. Thank you all. Bye-bye.

construction cranes

operator training

assembly coordination

job site safety

tower cranes

urban areas

rigging techniques

accident prevention

workflow efficiency

safety standards

rigging equipment

critical lifts

continuous training

construction crane accidents

fall protection