Soft Ground Excuses

Rick Raef is a heavy construction safety consultant for Willis Group Holdings, San Francisco, Calif., a global insurance broker. Raef has been with Willis since 1996, during which time he developed a crisis management program called, "Character Based Crisis Management: A Contractor's Survival Guide." He is currently the editor of WCSN-The Willis Construction Safety Network, an electronic safety bulletin distributed to contractors in the United States and Australia . You can contact Rick Raef at raef_ri@willis.com.

April 7, 2004 -With inclement weather hitting many parts of the country, we are seeing the perils of soft or wet ground in the work place. In Orlando , Fla. , a crane tipped over and of course, in these types of conditions, soft ground is always an easy place to put the blame. But what these very good photos show is that it isn't really the soft ground that bears responsibility in this matter. (Photos courtesy Bob Coschignano) It's the people who put cranes on soft ground to begin with.

As I have said before, there remains no evidence in recorded history, of soft ground reaching up from below, grabbing a crane off a lowbed trailer, and forcing it to set up in unsafe conditions.

When looking at the photos in the link provided below, look at the manner in which the cribbing under the outrigger floats was placed and look at the number of support timbers that were used. The type of outrigger support, the method of placement, and the quantity of support material, are all inadequate.

All of these decisions related to the set-up of the crane were made by the operator, an assistant, or some other humanoid type of being. And therein lies the problem.

The solution for soft ground crane failures lies not in the excuse of "soft ground," but in the minds of those who put their cranes on the soft ground without proper outrigger support.


http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?id=25543&sectionId=45

Note: Website link and permission to publish photos courtesy of www.firehouse.com and Bob Coschignano, respectively.