Certification requirements explained regarding service truck crane operators

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Of the many tools service truck operators might need to master in their trade, cranes are among the most complex and, potentially, most dangerous. Now that the U.S. government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has made crane operator certifications mandatory — including for service truck cranes of over 2,000 pounds capacity when used in construction — it is even more important to examine whether a crane-utilizing service truck operator should seek out training and accreditation.

The National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO) plays a key role in determining what standards must be met for crane operator certification. The NCCCO even offers specific service truck crane operator certification. Tara Whittington, NCCCO manager of

marketing and customer service, says that the criteria and the materials covered are driven as often by industry as by the developing requirements of OSHA or of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

“We started development in 2012 because of outreach from the manufacturer and user community,” Whittington said. “That’s usually the way that most of our programs get on our agenda. Manufacturers, users and other associations decide that they need something for those particular machines. While we had some other certifications that could have covered them, because of those industries that specifically use these smaller cranes, they wanted a program that was designed specifically for those types of machines.”

NCCCO develops the certification exams and then leaves training and administration of exams to either the training industry itself or companies with in-house training programs. Whittington said the exams are developed through extensive job task analysis and industry polls to determine exactly what is required to safely and effectively perform the task.

“This exam, for instance, has four domains on the written exams — site operations, technical knowledge, manufacturers, and load charts,” Whittington said. “That’s a great roadmap for those that are creating the training as well.”

Training for the tests

Organizations such as the Crane Inspection & Certification Bureau (CICB) administer the training. CICB’s training for the service truck crane operator certification is a three-day program with two days of prep and then written and practical examinations on the final day. Roughly 100 operators participated in the training in 2019, the large majority of whom were sent for the training by the companies they work for.

“Most crane operators are very knowledgeable in how to operate the crane and what they’re

doing already,” said CICB sales account manager Shawn Khan. “But not everybody is a hundred percent familiar with all the OSHA and ANSI standards or are able to relate the numbers as to what they cover.”

CICB develops all its own training and classroom materials based around the requirements for the NCCCO certification.

“On the NCCCO website, they have a list of resource reference material that individual operators need to become familiar with,” said CICB general manager Jerry Longtin. “From that, we build our program based on the type of resource material that they recommend. And then we utilize that and incorporate it into our tests and quizzes and so on.”

The Crane Institute of America (CIA) offers a small crane operator program, which includes service and mechanic trucks. CIA president James Headley — who is also the primary at a separate but associated company, Crane Institute Certification — is a veteran crane operator who actually started back in the days when on-the-job training was all that was required of a crane jockey. However, since crane operator certification became mandatory, OSHA has mandated that certification is not enough – operators must be evaluated by another qualified person.

Qualified evaluation required

“When I got in the training business, if you had any kind of formal training, you were considered qualified,” Headley said. “Then along came certification — if you’re trained and certified, you’re considered qualified. But neither one of them really qualifies you and now they’re requiring an evaluation on the crane by somebody that’s capable of doing it and that’s the way it should be. The employer evaluation, over time is it’s going to diminish the importance of certification, and rightly so, it’s more crane specific and task specific, whereas certification is like getting a driver’s license. There’s a lot of people down here that have a driver’s license that are really not qualified to drive a car.”

CIA has two training rooms at its five-acre facility in Sanford, Fla., where it offers a variety of classroom and hands-on training courses. Courses are also conducted at conference rooms around the country and on-site on behalf of particular customers. The course itself covers OSHA and American Society of Mechanical Engineers crane standards, the causes and results of accidents, terminology, components, pre-operational inspections, setup and the recognition of site hazards and safe operation practices and procedures among many other topics. One of the most crucial is the correct interpretation of load charts, Headley noted.

Service crane charts “difficult”

“Sometimes, we’ll spend as much as two days going over the load charts for all types of mobile cranes,” he said. “It’s the hardest thing for operators to comprehend. The capacity charts on service mechanic trucks can be in some ways the most difficult. Our instructors find these to be some of the most difficult capacity charts to interpret of all cranes. I think it is because of the way the capacity chart is designed. I guess the manufacturer is just trying to get everything on a small placard and this design is a way to do it.”

As for service truck operators, technically, they are only required to hold crane certification if performing duties beyond simple repairs and maintenance of equipment. However, it is very common for service trucks to be used for construction applications.

“I go to trade shows and notice they’re making these type cranes larger and larger,” Headley said. “I think I saw one recently with a 40-foot boom. Construction equipment is getting larger, so you need a crane with a higher capacity to help you take it apart and put it back together and so forth. But they use them for other applications in general construction, to lift and place loads.”

As such, many job sites will require any crane operator to be certified, even if they are just being used for standard repairs and maintenance. And rightly so, Headley said, as smaller cranes may actually be more dangerous because people may not respect them, and their potential for danger, as much as larger cranes.

Safe rather than sorry

“It’s such a fine line,” Whittington said. “You could be doing one task one minute and then the next thing you turn around and you’re placing a propane tank and now that’s considered construction. The general consensus is, especially when it comes to OSHA, you want to be safe, rather than sorry. You want to make sure that you’re covered.”

This year, OSHA announced that it would temporarily not be accepting certifications from CIC until CIC acquires its accreditation with ANSI or another accrediting agency. All CIC certification are good for five years from the issue date so no certification will be affected during which time that CIC is moving to ANSI accreditation. OSHA implemented the accreditation requirement when it made operator certification a law requiring that the testing organization be accredited. When Headley spoke with Service Truck Magazine, he indicated that everything had been completed and CIC was simply waiting for ANSI auditors to arrive. Barring any unforeseen delays, he said that CIC should have obtained ANSI accreditation by the time this article sees print.

— Matt Jones

Matt Jones is a freelance writer based in Fredericton, N.B.