Crane and Hoist Inspection

Crane and hoist inspection covers the equipment itself: structure, mechanism, load bearing components and controls. It is not the record of the lift plan, the sling or the rigging, and it does not extend to floor-level handling equipment.

Overhead lifting equipment sits under a specific statutory examination duty in most jurisdictions, layered on top of general machinery guarding law. OSHA 1910.179 sets the mechanical and structural requirements for overhead cranes; ASME B30 volumes cover hoists, hooks and below-the-hook devices in more technical detail; and where the equipment lifts persons or loads over people, national thorough-examination regimes add a competent-person sign-off.

The duty to examine lifting equipment periodically is close to universal, but the three regimes differ sharply in how prescriptive they are about interval, competence and what a defect requires next.

The form prompts pass, partial or fail against each item. What determines whether the record protects anyone is what backs those answers up.

Crane and hoist findings are unusual in that the equipment is usually inspected on schedule. What fails is the depth behind a pass, and what happens after a load-bearing fail.

A meat processing site inspected an overhead hoist used to move product between the chill store and the packing line. The inspection recorded the hook condition as pass, the safety latch as present, and the overall result as a pass with no action required. The record noted the latch was present because it was visible on the hook; nobody had tried to close it.

Three months later a load slipped off the hook when the latch failed to engage under a light load, staying a near miss only because the drop height was low. The latch spring had corroded in the chill store environment to the point where it no longer returned to the closed position, a condition invisible from a distance but obvious the moment someone tried to operate it. The fix was not a new question on the form; Safety Latch Present And Working already asked for exactly this. It was an instruction that load-bearing items marked 'present' must be operated, not observed, before being recorded as passing.

The inspection record itself is straightforward. What slips is the connection between a load-bearing fail and the equipment actually being stopped, and between the statutory interval and the date the next inspection is really due.

KnowMaintain

Holds the crane and hoist library against the statutory interval for each asset, flags equipment running up to or past its due date, and keeps the inspection and out-of-service record together.

Ella

Watches for a load-bearing fail recorded without a corresponding out-of-service action, and raises it rather than letting a fail sit inside an averaged pass.

KnowSafe

Tracks the statutory examination register across all lifting equipment, distinct from routine maintenance, so a LOLER-type interval is managed on its own clock.

Safe working load (SWL)

The maximum load the equipment is rated to lift, marked on the equipment and checked for legibility as part of the inspection.

Thorough examination

A statutory examination of lifting equipment by a competent person, distinct from routine maintenance, required at a fixed maximum interval in several jurisdictions.

Competent person

Someone with the theoretical and practical knowledge of the equipment type to detect defects and assess their significance, not merely someone trained to complete the checklist.

Discard criterion

A measured limit, such as chain elongation or rope diameter loss, beyond which a load bearing component must be replaced rather than continued in service.

Knockout item

A field on the inspection whose failure determines the fit-for-service outcome regardless of the overall score, typically a load-bearing or safety-critical component.