Who We Are
3P Safety Crane & Rigging Training is a working crane shop that trains, tests, and qualifies crews — not a classroom company that read about cranes in a book. We are founder-led, headquartered in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and we deliver NCCCO certification training, rigger and signal-person qualification, and train-the-trainer programs in all 50 states, the U.S. territories, and on overseas U.S. military bases.
We’re part of the 3P Safety family of companies under 3P Safety Services, LLC — one team working three lanes of the same road: training the people who run cranes, inspecting the cranes they run, and staffing the safety professionals who watch over both.
The short version of our pitch is simple. When your operator gets certified with us, the person signing off was running iron the week before. That changes what gets taught.
The Founder Behind the Iron
3P Safety is led by Patrick Salazar, who has worked cranes in the field since 2005. He didn’t move from a desk into training — he moved from the seat, the hook, and the inspection report into teaching the people who hold those jobs now.
His credentials are the working kind:
- NCCCO Mobile Crane Operator — certified across the Lattice Boom Crane (LAT), Telescopic Boom Crane — Fixed Cab (TSS), and Telescopic Boom Crane — Swing Cab (TLL) designations
- NCCCO Tower Crane Operator
- NCCCO Certified Crane Inspector — he inspects cranes professionally through our inspections company
- NCCCO Lift Director — the credential for planning and directing critical lifts
- OSHA 500 — authorized OSHA construction outreach trainer
- First Aid / CPR instructor credentials
That stack matters for one reason: every program we run is built by someone who has done the work it certifies. The load-chart math comes with the story of the pick where it mattered. The inspection module comes from someone who writes real inspection reports. The lift-direction training comes from a certified lift director.
What We Do
We run four core services, and they fit together on purpose:
- Employer-based, on-site training — our instructors and NCCCO practical examiners mobilize to your jobsite, anywhere in the U.S. or overseas, and train your crew on your own equipment.
- Qualifying classes — qualified rigger, signal person, qualified-person, operator evaluation, and inspector development. Fast, documented, audit-ready.
- NCCCO certification — every CCO credential we deliver, from mobile, tower, and overhead operators to lift director and crane inspector, with accredited practical testing.
- Train-the-trainer (EQP) — we build your in-house trainer and evaluator so you can qualify every new hire without paying for outside training forever.
Around those four sit the supporting pieces: our crane operator school in Goldsboro, EM 385-1-1 training for federal work, offshore and pedestal crane programs, and exam prep for every written test we put people in front of.
How Training Actually Runs
Most of our work happens on your jobsite. We field local NCCCO-certified instructors across the country, so training fits your schedule and your iron — nights, weekends, shutdowns, between pours. One mobilization can certify operators, qualify riggers and signal persons, and document operator evaluations for the whole roster.
When you’d rather come to us, Goldsboro is set up in two halves:
- The training center at 309 N William St — computer-based written prep where candidates practice on the NCCCO demo exam in the same format they’ll face on test day.
- The hands-on yard at Harris Steel Erectors, 615 Old Smithfield Rd — our partner yard, a working steel-erection operation with a real crane fleet. We’re straight about this: it’s a partnership, not our iron, and that’s exactly why the practice feels like a jobsite instead of a parking lot.
Open-enrollment NCCCO classes run monthly — mobile crane operator, qualified rigger, and signal person — and the class schedule stays current.
The Track Record
Numbers we can stand behind, because they come out of our own records:
- 1,000+ companies have trained with us — crane rental houses, steel erectors, GCs, plants, marine contractors, utilities, and tree care outfits. The list is public.
- 1,000+ operators, riggers, and signal persons trained and tested through our school records alone.
- All 50 states and the U.S. territories, with crews served from regional hubs and local instructors.
- OCONUS delivery — we mobilize to overseas U.S. military installations, and our federal-side training speaks EM 385-1-1.
We don’t publish client logos and we don’t claim partnerships. The companies hired us, we did the work, and the work speaks for itself.
The 3P Safety Family
This site is the training arm. The family covers the full lifecycle of a crane program:
- 3P Safety Crane & Rigging Training (you’re here) — certification, qualification, and train-the-trainer.
- 3P Safety Inspections — NCCCO-certified third-party crane and lifting-equipment inspections, nationwide.
- 3P Safety Staffing — credentialed site safety managers, SSHOs, and EHS professionals deployed to projects across the country.
The connection isn’t a marketing diagram — it’s how the work actually flows. The inspector who looks at your crane informs what the training covers. The safety managers in the field tell us what OSHA is citing this year. Train with one arm of 3P Safety and you get what the other two have learned.
The Standards We Live By
NCCCO is our only certification partner. Accredited, OSHA-recognized, portable across employers and states — when we say certified, we mean CCO certified, full stop. We run accredited practical testing and prep candidates for the computer-based written exams.
Around the certification sits the regulatory stack we train to every week:
- OSHA 29 CFR 1926 Subpart CC — construction cranes: operator certification, qualified riggers and signal persons, and the employer evaluation duty under 1926.1427(f)
- OSHA 1910.179 / 1910.180 — general-industry overhead and mobile cranes and designated-operator qualification
- ASME B30 — the consensus standards behind hand signals, inspections, and rigging practice
- EM 385-1-1 — the USACE/NAVFAC manual federal contractors live under
And one house rule: documentation first. Training that isn’t documented didn’t happen — not to OSHA, not to a GC’s prequalification team, not to the auditor. Every program we run ends with records built to be pulled out of a drawer under pressure.
Why Employers Pick Us — and Stay
You talk to the people who run the training. No call center, no sales layer. The form on our contact page lands in our pipeline and gets answered by us.
We schedule around production. Crane crews don’t stop building because it’s training day. We work nights, weekends, shutdowns, and the gaps in your pour schedule.
One visit covers the matrix. Operators certified, riggers and signal persons qualified, evaluations documented — the whole 1926 personnel picture in a single mobilization instead of four vendors.
We train on your iron. Your operators test on equipment they’ll actually run, which is better for passing rates and better for the way they work afterward.
If that sounds like how you’d run a training company, we’ll get along. Call (252) 274-0583 or tell us about your crew.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is 3P Safety located?
Goldsboro, North Carolina — a computer-based training center at 309 N William St and hands-on training at our partner yard, Harris Steel Erectors, at 615 Old Smithfield Rd. But most of our training happens on customers’ jobsites across all 50 states and overseas.
Who actually teaches the classes?
NCCCO-certified instructors led by our founder, who holds NCCCO Mobile (LBC/TLL/TSS), Tower, Crane Inspector, and Lift Director certifications plus OSHA 500. The people teaching are the people who do the work.
How long has 3P Safety been doing this?
Our founder has worked cranes in the field since 2005 — operating, inspecting, and directing lifts — and built 3P Safety on that experience. More than 1,000 companies have trained with us.
Are you the same company as 3P Safety Inspections and 3P Safety Staffing?
Same family, separate lanes. Training (this site), third-party crane inspections, and safety staffing each run on their own site so you always know which service you’re buying — but it’s one team behind them.
Why don’t you publish prices?
Because honest crane-training pricing depends on crew size, crane types, location, and what mix of certification and qualification you need. We’d rather scope it straight on a five-minute call than post a number that’s wrong in both directions. Call (252) 274-0583.
Authoritative References
Also from 3P Safety: on-site OSHA & workplace safety training, heavy equipment operator training, and safety program consulting.