Crane thorough examination under LOLER: intervals, triggers, and scope

Quick answer. Cranes are lifting equipment under LOLER 1998: thorough examination at least every 12 months (6 months if the crane lifts people), after installation or erection at a new location, and after exceptional circumstances such as overload, collision, or modification. Everything below the hook (slings, chains, shackles, lifting beams) is a lifting accessory on the 6-month cycle. The examination is a competent person's inspection for safety-critical defects; it is not a service, and a maintenance record does not substitute for it.

Cranes concentrate every LOLER concept in one asset: default intervals, event triggers, the accessory distinction, and the sharpest consequences for getting it wrong. This is the interval map for the three crane families a UK duty holder most commonly runs.

Overhead and gantry cranes

The fixed workhorse in fabrication shops and heavy stores.

• Periodic: thorough examination at least every 12 months.
• After installation: a first thorough examination after installation and before first use, confirming it was installed correctly and is safe to operate.
• After events: overloads, crane-to-crane or crane-to-structure contact, motor or brake replacement, any modification affecting the load path.
• The hook and below: the hook block is part of the crane; the slings, chains, and lifting beams hung from it are accessories on 6-month examination.

The common overhead-crane failure is treating the annual service visit as the examination. A service lubricates and adjusts; a thorough examination is a competent person's systematic hunt for defects that are or could become dangerous, reported on the Schedule 1 fields. Same visit sometimes, same activity never.

Mobile cranes

• Periodic: 12 months.
• Configuration and duty: the report must reflect the machine's configurations (fly jib fitted or not, counterweight options) because safe working load varies per configuration, and Schedule 1 requires SWL per configuration.
• After exceptional circumstances: recovery work, travel incidents, and ground failures under outriggers are the classic triggers owners under-report.
• Hired machines: the hire company usually holds the periodic examination; the using site must verify currency before the machine works. The split duties are covered in LOLER on construction sites.

Tower cranes

The strictest regime in practice, because the after-assembly trigger dominates:

• After every erection: each erection at a new site (and each significant reconfiguration, such as a height increase by climbing) is an installation for Regulation 9 purposes, requiring thorough examination before use.
• Periodic: 12 months, which on many projects never arrives before the next erection-triggered examination does.
• In-service inspections: between thorough examinations, regular inspections under Regulation 9(3) with records kept until the next record.

Accessories: the 6-month cycle below the hook

Every crane's practical compliance risk concentrates in its accessories. Chains, wire rope slings, textile slings, shackles, eyebolts, plate clamps, lifting beams and spreader frames all sit on the 6-month examination cycle regardless of which crane uses them.

Why this is where systems fail: accessories are numerous, cheap, mobile between sites and machines, and individually easy to overlook. A duty holder with one perfectly examined crane and forty accessories of uncertain history has not complied; the load path is only as examined as its weakest link. Individual identification per accessory, with the examination record attached to that identity, is the only arrangement that survives an incident investigation. Retention rules for those reports are in record keeping under Regulation 11.

Varying the defaults

All intervals above are Regulation 9 defaults. A written scheme of examination drawn up by a competent person can vary them: shorter for high-duty or harsh-environment cranes (foundries, docks, outdoor gantries in coastal air), occasionally longer for demonstrably low-duty machines. The scheme's reasoning carries the liability, and interval reform is one of the areas the current HSE review of LOLER may touch.

Where Hovermarks fits

Hovermarks tracks each crane and every accessory as its own QR-tagged asset with its own cycle, so the 12-month machine and its forty 6-month accessories each carry a current report, a next-due date, and a defect history answerable by a scan. The LOLER solution page shows the workflow; the LOLER inspection guide collects the complete resource set.