Our engineers have investigated accidents and collapses involving the following types of cranes.

• Rough terrain telescopic cranes
• All terrain telescopic cranes
• Crawler cranes
• Lattice boom crawler cranes
• Luffing jib tower cranes
• Hammerhead tower cranes
• Mobile self erecting tower cranes
• Gantry cranes
• Quayside container cranes
• Drilling rigs

Causes we have determined have included operator error, poor maintenance, subsidence and manufacturing fault (welding), fatigue and corrosion.

There have also been instances when our engineers attend a crane collapse and determine the initial point of failure, which turns out to be where the crane was previously repaired.  Then we find the ‘repair’ was in name only, characterized by welding that would fail any welding standard.

Our expertise extends to brake and slew ring failures.  Most cranes rotate and a slew ring achieves this.  Our engineers have found slew rings where the teeth have all worn away, or the ball race has worn or corroded and lost its circularity, allowing the two halves to separate.  Separation can also occur as a result of the fatigue of slew ring securing bolts.

We have an in-house metallurgical laboratory and our engineers often bring samples back to our metallurgists and chemists for laboratory examination, enabling us to offer a compete root cause analysis.