When a Lift Needs a Written Plan, and What Goes in It

By Patrick SalazarSep 14, 202632 min read

A crane lift plan is the written record of how one specific lift will be made: the load and its verified weight, the crane configuration and chart capacity at the working radius, the rigging, the ground, the hazards, the people and the signals. OSHA requires a plan by a qualified person, reviewed with the crew in a meeting, for any lift with two or more cranes on the load (29 CFR 1926.1432), and a trial lift and pre-lift meeting before hoisting personnel (1926.1431), but neither rule requires the plan to be written down. A written plan is mandatory on Army Corps of Engineers work and any contract that invokes its safety manual, where EM 385-1-1 (2024) requires a written standard lift plan for every lift or series of lifts and a submitted critical lift plan before every critical lift (16-7.b and 16-7.d), and wherever an owner’s or host site’s lifting procedure requires one.

So the honest answer to “do I need a written lift plan?” depends on which documents govern your job. Nothing in 29 CFR 1926 Subpart CC says “write a lift plan.” The standard says a great deal about planning, names the person who has to direct certain lifts, and on a handful of them spells out the meeting and the numbers that must be verified before the hook moves. The written crane lift plan requirement comes from somewhere else: the federal safety manual incorporated in your contract, a steel-erection election, the host plant’s program, or a consensus standard your company adopted on purpose. Here is where each written requirement actually lives, clause by clause, and what a plan has to contain before it is worth anybody’s signature.

Lift plan requirements in OSHA’s crane rule, and what it left out on purpose

Subpart CC took effect on November 8, 2010, and its planning duties are spread across the standard rather than collected in one place: ground conditions in §1926.1402, assembly and disassembly in §1926.1404, power lines in §1926.1408 and §1926.1410, load weight in §1926.1417(o)(3), personnel hoisting in §1926.1431, and multiple-crane lifts in §1926.1432. Read them together and a pattern shows up. OSHA tells you who must plan, what has to be verified, and when the crew has to meet. It rarely tells you to produce a document. For the operator-side rules that sit around these clauses, see Subpart CC explained for 2026 and the Subpart CC overview page; this post stays on the planning clauses.

That was a decision, not an oversight. Commenters on the proposed rule asked OSHA to define a “critical lift” as anything over 75 percent of rated capacity, any multi-crane pick, any personnel lift, or anything a qualified person judged exceptionally risky, and to hang extra planning requirements on that definition. OSHA declined in the final rule’s preamble at 75 FR 48045–46, explaining that C-DAC (the Cranes and Derricks Negotiated Rulemaking Advisory Committee, which drafted the rule) had weighed the term and preferred provisions tailored to each situation over one percentage trigger, and noting how far apart the existing definitions were: the Corps of Engineers’ 2008 manual used 75 percent and a list of conditions, while NASA’s lifting standard defined critical lifts by consequence (loss of life, flight hardware, one-of-a-kind items). The same passage records a second refusal that matters more here. A commenter asked that the multiple-crane lift plan be required in writing so it would be well designed and clearly communicated, and OSHA answered that §1926.1432(a) does not require the plan to be documented. So the one OSHA clause that pairs a required plan with a named lift director still allows that plan to live in a qualified person’s head, provided it is reviewed with the crew in a meeting.

The Subpart CC provisions that do generate paper are narrower than most crews assume. Under §1926.1410(e), the procedures for working closer to a power line than Table A allows must be documented and immediately available on site. Under §1926.1404(j) and (m)(1)(i), where the manufacturer has published no cantilever limit or no component-and-configuration limits, a registered professional engineer familiar with the equipment determines the limit, or approves the configuration, in writing. Under §1926.1417(b)(3), where manufacturer operating procedures are unavailable, anything touching capacity is developed and signed by a registered professional engineer. And under §1926.752(e), a steel erector that elects alternate means and methods must have a site-specific erection plan, developed by a qualified person, available at the work site. Everything else is a duty to plan, verify, direct, or meet, which is what the table below sorts out.

The 75 percent rule is four different rules

Ask three people where the 75 percent threshold comes from and you will get three answers, and all three can be right, because the number appears in unrelated places doing unrelated jobs.

First, §1926.1417(o)(3), the load-weight check in the table above. The operator either has the weight from a source the industry recognizes (the load’s manufacturer, a calculation from measured dimensions and a known per-foot weight, or other equally reliable means), or begins hoisting and reads the load weighing device, load moment indicator, rated capacity indicator or rated capacity limiter. If that reading shows more than 75 percent of the maximum rated capacity at the longest radius the lift will use, the operator may not proceed until the weight is verified by the first method. The 75 percent figure here is a ceiling on guessing, not a definition of a critical lift.

Second, §1926.751 in the steel erection standard, which defines a critical lift as one that exceeds 75 percent of the rated capacity of the crane or derrick or requires more than one crane or derrick. The definition does no work by itself. As the 2010 preamble points out, Subpart R does not require planning or extra precautions merely because a lift meets it; a critical lift plan comes into play only when the erector elects a site-specific erection plan under §1926.752(e), and Appendix A to Subpart R lists critical lifts, with rigging supplies and equipment, as one element the erector considers when writing that plan.

Third, EM 385-1-1, where paragraph 16-2.j(5) makes any lift that exceeds 75 percent of the load chart during construction work a critical lift, and a critical lift on a Corps of Engineers job requires a written plan submitted for approval or acceptance. That is the only one of the three that turns the percentage into paper, and it is covered in its own section below.

Fourth, the 2010 preamble, which is the reason the first three never merged into one rule: asked to make 75 percent a critical-lift trigger across Subpart CC, OSHA pointed to §1926.1417(o)(3)(ii) and §1926.1417(s) as the places the standard already deals with loads over 75 percent and at 90 percent or more, and left it there. Two neighbors get mixed up with all of this. §1926.1417(s) requires the operator to test the brakes, by lifting the load a few inches and applying them, each time a load is 90 percent or more of the maximum line pull, with duty-cycle work needing the test on the first lift only. And §1926.1431(d) caps a personnel lift at 50 percent of the rated capacity for the radius and configuration, except during proof testing. If your own program sets a percentage for planning purposes, write it down as your company’s number and say which document it came from. Nobody can audit a threshold that exists only in a superintendent’s memory.

EM 385-1-1: the manual that wants paper on every lift

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manual, EM 385-1-1, is where the written plan becomes mandatory rather than advisable. The current edition is dated 15 March 2024 and supersedes the 30 November 2014 edition; it applies across USACE, including USACE contracts, and where the manual and applicable law differ, the more stringent requirement governs. The manual’s own front matter settles which edition you owe: on a construction contract under FAR 52.236-13, the version in effect on the date of solicitation governs, and existing contracts stay on the previous edition until completion (paragraph 5.b(1)). If your contract cites the 2014 edition, work to it and confirm paragraph numbers against it. Our EM 385-1-1 primer for first federal jobs covers the rest of the crane chapter; what follows is only the planning piece.

Paragraph 16-7.b, Standard Lift Plan, is the sentence that changes a federal job. A written SLP is required for every lift or series of lifts, with duty-cycle or routine lifts allowed to share one plan. The plan must be developed, reviewed and accepted by all personnel involved in the lift; a copy stays on the crane for the approved lifts; and every SLP is kept for a minimum of three months. The minimum contents run under six headings: personnel (roles, responsibilities, qualifications, and any public or other-trade people the lift affects); area preparation (load handling location and path of travel, blocking and cribbing, overhead lines, ground stability); equipment considerations (capacity, configuration, obstructions, inspection, ground support conditions); load considerations (weight, center of gravity, radii, configuration); rigging considerations (type, configuration including sling and load angle factors, inspection, need for sling protection); and environmental considerations (wind speed, storms, precipitation, power lines in the travel or swing area, and a barricaded counterweight swing area). The manual lists what the plan must include rather than prescribing a layout, so any format that captures every item works, including the worksheet at the top of this post.

Paragraph 16-2.j then defines the critical lift, and the list is much longer than the 75 percent line most people remember. A lift is critical when it involves hazardous material such as explosives or highly volatile substances; when it hoists personnel; when more than one piece of load handling equipment shares the load; when the center of gravity could change; when it exceeds 75 percent of the load chart during construction work; when a rubber-tire chart is used without outriggers; when more than one hoist on the same machine is used; when it involves multiple lift rigging assemblies or other non-routine or technically difficult rigging; when the load is submerged; when the load is out of the operator’s view; when it is a load test; when a land crane on a barge or pontoon must travel while lifting; when two or more tower cranes share an operating envelope; and whenever the operator, lift director, supervisor or employer believes it should be treated as critical. Three exceptions are written in: a load engineered to travel in guided slots on fixed rigging or lifting beams (intake gates, tailgates and logs) is not critical; affixed A-frames and dredge-related operations doing the work the equipment was designed for are exempt; and an out-of-view lift is not critical if a signal person in view of the operator or working radio communication is used, the load does not exceed 2 tons (1.8 metric tons), and the lift director judges it routine. Our critical lift planning guide turns the list into a numbered checklist, with a worked example of the percentage trigger.

Paragraph 16-7.d is the critical lift plan itself. Before any critical lift, a competent person or qualified person prepares the plan and submits it to the USACE supervisor for approval, or to the contracting officer or contracting officer’s representative for acceptance. It must carry everything in 16-7.a and 16-7.b plus: the make and model of each crane with its line, boom and swing speeds; the exact size and weight of the load and of every crane and rigging component that adds to it, with the maximum load limits across the entire range of the lift from the manufacturer’s chart; the lift geometry and procedure through the whole range, including crane position, lift height, load radius, boom length and boom angle; the anticipated hazards; a site drawing showing crane placement, adjacent equipment, facilities, utilities and other site features; a rigging plan showing lift points, procedures and hardware; the applicable load chart with the machine’s serial number; ground conditions, outrigger and crawler track requirements and, where needed, a mat design for a level, stable foundation adequate for the maximum ground pressure; for floating plant, the platform condition and maximum list and trim; a list of the environmental conditions under which the lift stops, including the manufacturer’s; coordination and communication requirements; and, for tandem lifts, whether an equalizer beam is required.

Whatever critical lift plan form your contracting office supplies, a reviewer expects to see the same things on it: the load total, with the auxiliary block, the main block, the lifting beam, slings and shackles, the jib whether erected or stowed, the hoist rope, and anything else added in, and the source of the load weight attached; maximum and minimum radius and boom length, the capacity at each radius, the boom angles, the gross load, and the lift as a percentage of rated capacity; the maximum bearing pressure with the calculation attached; a pre-lift checklist that ends with whether the pre-lift meeting has been held; and signatures from the operator, the riggers, the signal person and the lift director. The manual also makes every load test a critical lift (16-8.u), documents the personnel-hoisting justification in the critical lift plan (16-8.hh), and requires a critical lift plan whenever a multiple lift rigging assembly is used (15-7). Filling that form from your own numbers is the planning half of an EM 385-1-1 crane and rigging class.

ASME P30.1 and the B30 volumes

Outside federal work, the consensus reference for planning is ASME P30.1, Planning for Load Handling Activities. The 2024 edition, published by ASME in 2025, states its scope as planning considerations and practices for load handling equipment and associated activities when moving loads vertically or horizontally, divided into two categories according to the nature of the activity and the degree of exposure to the issues that affect safety: the Standard Lift Plan and the Critical Lift Plan. The standard says in the same breath that users may create subcategories for their own operations. Note what the published scope does not do: it does not tie the category to a percentage. Which category a lift falls into is a judgment about the work and its exposure, which is the logic the Corps list follows and the opposite of a single-number rule.

P30.1 has no legal force of its own. It binds you when a contract, an owner’s specification or your own safety program adopts it, and then it binds you exactly as written in that document. The same is true of ASME B30.5 for mobile cranes, whose latest edition on ASME’s site is B30.5-2025, and of the volumes NCCCO lists as references for its lift director exam: B30.3, B30.5, B30.9, B30.10, B30.20, B30.26 and B30.29. When a host site says “we follow ASME,” ask which volume and which edition, and put the answer in the plan.

What goes in a crane lift plan worth signing

Format matters less than completeness. A one-page plan that answers every line below beats a ten-page template with blanks, and none of the lines is invented: each is asked for by at least one of the documents above. The worksheet at the top of this post puts these rows on paper: the standard lift on page 1, the critical-lift and multiple-crane rows on page 2.

A worked example: the numbers the plan has to show

Illustrative figures, not a chart quotation. The fabricator’s drawing puts a skid at 28,000 pounds; the plan says so and names the drawing, which satisfies §1926.1417(o)(3)(i) and EM 385-1-1’s requirement that a critical lift plan state the exact weight of the load, rigging included, at the same time. Add 1,400 pounds for the block and 800 pounds for slings and shackles and the gross load is 30,200 pounds. At the pick radius the chart, after the manufacturer’s deductions, reads 41,000 pounds, and 30,200 divided by 41,000 is about 74 percent. On an OSHA-only site that number is simply true. On a Corps site it sits about one point under the critical-lift line, which is exactly where a plan earns its keep, because the set is six feet farther out.

At the set radius the same chart reads 36,500 pounds, and 30,200 divided by 36,500 is about 83 percent. That single change moves the lift across the EM 385-1-1 line into a written, submitted critical lift plan; it would meet the steel-erection definition of a critical lift; and it is the reason §1926.1417(o)(3)(ii) runs its 75 percent check at the longest radius the lift will use rather than the friendliest. A sound critical lift plan records capacity at both the maximum and the minimum radius for the same reason. A plan that shows one radius describes a lift that is not going to happen. Reading the chart at the worst point of the swing is the skill worked through in our boom-truck load chart walkthrough and the load chart basics page; the sling-angle side of the same arithmetic is in five worked sling-angle examples. The same pick, run against every critical-lift trigger, is the worked example in our critical lift planning guide.

Who writes it, who signs it, who can stop it

OSHA answers all three for a multiple-crane lift and, by analogy, sets the pattern for everything else: a qualified person develops the plan (§1926.1432(a)(1)), engineering expertise comes in whenever that person says so (§1926.1432(a)(3)), and the lift director, one person who meets both definitions or a competent person assisted by qualified persons, directs the lift and reviews the plan with every worker in a meeting (§1926.1432(b)). The definitions in §1926.1401 do the real work. A qualified person has the degree, certificate, professional standing, or the extensive knowledge, training and experience to solve the problem in front of them; a competent person can identify existing and predictable hazards and has authorization to take prompt corrective action. The preamble spells out the consequence: because the lift director must be a competent person, the lift director has authority both to halt the lift and to modify the plan, and a modified plan is a different plan that has to be reviewed with the crew again. Our post on certified, qualified and competent untangles the three terms if the distinction is new to you.

Stop authority does not wait for the director. Under §1926.1418 the operator has authority to stop and refuse to handle loads whenever there is a concern about safety, until a qualified person determines that safety has been assured, and under §1926.1417(y) the operator must obey a stop or emergency stop signal no matter who gives it. Power-line work inside Table A adds a third layer: §1926.1410(h) requires the utility owner (or the engineer) and every employer involved to identify one person who directs the procedures and has authority to stop work at any time.

The Corps manual is more prescriptive about the paper. Competent persons develop lift plans (16-4.b) with qualified persons assisting (16-4.c); the critical lift plan is prepared by a competent or qualified person and submitted for approval or acceptance (16-7.d); the lift director must be competent and qualified on lift operations and able to develop, review and approve lift plans (16-3.b); and the standard lift plan is accepted by everyone involved, not just its author (16-7.b). A signature block on the plan makes that acceptance literal: operator, riggers, signal person and lift director each sign, with lines for others. A signature there is not ceremony. It is the moment a named person adopts the numbers, and crews feel the difference between a plan someone owns and a form someone filled out.

Where lift director certification fits

No OSHA clause requires a certified lift director, and EM 385-1-1 defines the role by competence rather than by card: the lift director is the person designated to direct the load handling activity, with thorough knowledge of safety procedures for the crane, rigging and employee conduct, who is both a competent person and a qualified person on the specific equipment, and who may be the operator or someone else (16-2.n). What a certification does is prove that judgment to someone who cannot watch you work, which is the problem a general contractor’s prequalification file is trying to solve.

NCCCO’s CCO Lift Director program offers two designations, Lift Director for Mobile Cranes (MLD) and Lift Director for Tower Cranes (TLD). Candidates must be at least 18, pass the written examinations, and comply with NCCCO’s substance abuse policy and code of ethics. NCCCO’s candidate handbook describes the certified lift director as someone who, within the responsibilities laid out in ASME B30 and in accordance with Subpart CC, oversees the work of the crane and its rigging crew: pre-lift planning, preparation and coordination; communication among the people involved; the safety of crane, equipment, load and environment; making sure everyone understands their duties and hazards; telling the operator the weight of the load and where it is going; and proper rigging and balancing.

The exam outline, question counts and time limits are published in the current Lift Director candidate handbook, and they can change between editions, so study from the edition in force when you test rather than from numbers repeated around the internet. The structure is stable enough to plan around: a Core exam plus a specialty exam for mobile or tower cranes, and no separate practical, because NCCCO builds the practical component into the specialty exams as scenario questions on custom lift plans and load charts. The handbook’s lift-plan domain is a fair summary of this post: read, interpret and communicate the plan; recognize and address deviations before or during the lift; plan for contingencies such as emergency laydown, shutdown, securing and personnel rescue; and calculate and apply the percentage of rated capacity used. Patrick Salazar, who wrote this post, holds the CCO Lift Director credential alongside his mobile crane (LBC, TLL and TSS), tower crane, Rigger Level I and II and mobile and tower crane inspector cards and OSHA 500, and has been in the field since 2005. Our NCCCO lift director exam prep page covers the designations, and the career path post shows where the credential sits for an operator who wants to run lifts instead of only make them.

The meeting is part of the plan

OSHA inserted the phrase “in a meeting” into §1926.1432(b)(2) deliberately, on the reasoning that a collective review is more likely to work than separate, individual ones. The personnel hoisting rule, §1926.1431, is more specific still: paragraph (m) requires a pre-lift meeting that reviews the section’s requirements and the procedures to be followed, attended by the operator, the signal person if one is used, the employees to be hoisted and the person responsible for the task, held before the trial lift at each new work location and repeated for anyone newly assigned. Power-line work under §1926.1408(b)(1) starts with a planning meeting between the operator and the workers who will be near the equipment or load, and §1926.1410(f) adds a review with the utility owner or engineer in the room when the work is inside Table A.

Signals get their own agreements. Under §1926.1421(a) the operator, signal person and lift director (if there is one) must agree on the voice signals before operations begin, and need not meet again unless a worker is added or substituted, there is confusion, or a signal changes; §1926.1421(c) requires the three of them to be able to communicate effectively in the language used; and §1926.1419(c)(2) requires the same three to agree in advance on any non-standard hand signals. The plan should record what was agreed: channel, call signs, the stop word, and who holds the edge of the exclusion zone. If standard hand signals are rusty on your crew, start with the five most-missed signals and the signal person qualification that follows.

How good-looking plans fail

The unverified weight. The shipping paper said 22,000 pounds and the retrofit added steel nobody documented. §1926.1417(o)(3)(i) does not ask for a number; it asks for a source, and on Corps work EM 385-1-1 wants the exact weight, rigging included, written into the critical lift plan. If you cannot point at the drawing, the scale ticket or the calculation, the plan has a blank where the load should be.

Capacity read at one radius. The set was farther out than the pick, or the swing crossed into a quadrant with a lower chart. The plan states the worst radius the lift passes through and, for a swing across quadrants, the worst chart.

Rigging rated at vertical. Sling capacity falls as the legs flatten, and a plan that lists slings by tag rating alone has not rigged the lift. EM 385-1-1 asks for sling and load angle factors by name in 16-7.b(5), and the hardware itself has to survive inspection first; gear that should never make the lift is the subject of our red-tag post, and below-the-hook devices carry their own nameplate and inspection rules.

Ground assumed rather than assessed. §1926.1402(c) puts a duty on the controlling entity to prepare the ground and to tell the crane user and operator about voids, tanks and utilities identified in drawings, as-builts or soil analyses it possesses, and §1926.1402(e) requires a discussion with that entity when the A/D director or the operator finds the ground inadequate. A plan that says “ground OK” without a bearing pressure and a source has skipped the clause.

The plan written for the lift that did not happen. Different crane, longer radius, more wind, a second crew on the far side of the wall. OSHA’s own reading of §1926.1432(b)(2) is that a modified plan is a different plan and must be reviewed again. A changed lift gets a new plan or, at minimum, a re-briefed and re-initialed one.

Blank templates are everywhere, ours included; the trade is recognizing the lift that needs one and filling it with numbers that have a source.

Frequently asked questions

Who must create the lifting plan for a critical lift?

A qualified person, and on Corps of Engineers work a competent or qualified person. EM 385-1-1 (2024) paragraph 16-7.d says a competent person or qualified person prepares the critical lift plan and submits it to the USACE supervisor for approval, or to the contracting officer or COR for acceptance, before the lift. Under OSHA, the plan for any lift with more than one crane on the load is developed by a qualified person, with engineering expertise added whenever that person decides it is needed (§1926.1432(a)), and a steel erector’s site-specific erection plan is developed by a qualified person as well (§1926.752(e)). An owner’s program can require more, such as an engineer’s review. Good practice on every critical lift is a second qualified person who did not write the plan checking the numbers before anyone signs; our critical lift planning guide covers who signs what.

Do all documented lift plans have to use the same format?

No. OSHA prescribes no lift plan format, and EM 385-1-1 lists what a standard lift plan (16-7.b) and a critical lift plan (16-7.d) must include, not what the page must look like. What has to be consistent is the content: the load weight and its source, the crane configuration and the chart capacity at the worst radius, the rigging, the ground, the hazards, the stop conditions, the people and their signatures. A contract or a host site can require its own form, and when it does, use it. Inside your own program, one standard form is still smart, because reviewers learn where to look and blanks stand out; the free worksheet at the top of this post is built to that minimum.

Is lift director training required before someone can write a lift plan?

Not by OSHA, and not by title. §1926.1432(a)(1) requires the multiple-crane plan to be developed by a qualified person as defined in §1926.1401, a test of knowledge, training and demonstrated ability rather than a course certificate, and EM 385-1-1 assigns plan development to the competent person with qualified persons assisting (16-4.b and 16-4.c) without naming a class. NCCCO lift director certification is voluntary under both documents; what it provides is third-party evidence that the judgment exists. The real prerequisite is whatever produces a qualified person, whether that ends in a CCO exam or an employer designation letter backed by qualified person training.

What are the requirements for NCCCO lift director certification?

Be at least 18, pass the written exams, and comply with NCCCO’s substance abuse policy and code of ethics. Question counts and time limits for the Core and specialty exams are in the current Lift Director candidate handbook; the specialty exams are built around simulated lift plans and load charts, so there is no separate practical. Exams may be taken in any order, the matching exam must be passed within 12 months of the first, certification is valid for five years, and recertification happens in the 12 months before expiration. A study plan that skips reading real plans and charts is studying the wrong thing.

Does OSHA require a written lift plan?

Not for ordinary lifts, and not even for multiple-crane lifts: §1926.1432 requires a plan by a qualified person, reviewed with the crew in a meeting, and OSHA said in the 2010 preamble that the plan does not have to be documented. The written duties OSHA does impose are the narrow ones in the first table: power-line procedures inside Table A, an engineer’s writing where the manufacturer published no limits, and an elected site-specific erection plan. The blanket requirement comes from EM 385-1-1 on federal work, from host-site programs, and from ASME P30.1 where a contract adopts it.

What percent of capacity makes a lift critical?

Whatever the governing document says, and there is no universal number. EM 385-1-1 paragraph 16-2.j(5) uses more than 75 percent of the load chart during construction work, alongside thirteen other triggers that have nothing to do with percentage. The steel erection definition in §1926.751 is more than 75 percent or more than one crane, but it triggers nothing unless a site-specific erection plan is elected. Subpart CC has no critical-lift percentage at all; its 75 percent lives inside the load-weight check in §1926.1417(o)(3)(ii). ASME P30.1’s published scope sorts plans into standard and critical by the nature of the activity and its exposure, not by a percentage. When two thresholds apply to the same lift, plan to the stricter one.

Where does the capacity figure in a lift plan come from?

The manufacturer’s load chart for the exact configuration on the machine that day, read at the radius, boom length, counterweight and quadrant the lift will actually use. §1926.1401 defines rated capacity as the maximum working load the manufacturer permits under specified working conditions, and §1926.1417(c)(1) requires the load charts, operating speeds, hazard warnings and operator’s manual to be readily available in the cab at all times; §1926.1417(c)(2) adds that if charts exist only electronically and the display fails, the operator must stop or follow safe shutdown until the charts are available again. A plate on the boom or a rental listing gives you a maximum, not a capacity. Our worked boom-truck chart example walks through the deductions that turn the chart number into a net capacity.

Who should inspect rigging equipment and document its condition periodically, at intervals of a year or less?

A competent person designated by the employer. Under §1926.251(a)(6) in construction and §1910.184(d) in general industry, that person inspects each sling and all fastenings and attachments each day before use, with additional inspections during use where service conditions warrant, and damaged or defective slings come out of service immediately. The documented periodic inspection at intervals of a year or less is written into §1926.251(b)(6) in construction and §1910.184(e)(3) in general industry for alloy steel chain slings: a thorough periodic inspection on a regular basis set by frequency of use, severity of service, nature of the lifts and experience with sling life, never at intervals greater than once every 12 months, with the employer keeping a record of the most recent month each sling was thoroughly inspected; §1910.184(e)(3)(iii) assigns that thorough inspection to a competent person designated by the employer. ASME B30.9, the consensus standard for slings, covers fabrication, attachment, use, inspection, testing and maintenance of slings made of alloy steel chain, wire rope, metal mesh, synthetic fiber rope, synthetic webbing and polyester fiber yarns in a protective cover (the roundsling), and is the reference to write into your program for the sling types OSHA’s 12-month clause does not reach. How to run and record those inspections is the subject of our rigging gear inspection training, and the crane-side calendar is in the inspection rhythm post.

How long does a lift plan have to be kept?

OSHA sets no retention period because it does not require the document. EM 385-1-1 paragraph 16-7.b requires a copy of the standard lift plan on the crane for the approved lifts and a copy of every SLP kept for a minimum of three months; a critical lift plan is submitted to the government for approval or acceptance before the lift, which puts a copy in the government’s hands by definition. Host-site programs set their own periods. Whatever the number, keep the version that was signed, with the meeting date on it, because that is the version an investigator will ask for.

Authoritative References

• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1417 — operation requirements, including the load-weight check in (o)(3), load charts in the cab in (c) and the stop signal in (y).
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1431 — hoisting personnel: the 50 percent capacity limit, proof test, trial lift and pre-lift meeting.
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1432 — multiple-crane and derrick lifts: the qualified person’s plan, the lift director and the crew meeting.
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.751 — steel erection definitions, including OSHA’s definition of a critical lift.
• Cranes and Derricks in Construction final rule (Federal Register, Aug. 9, 2010) — OSHA’s preamble explaining what Subpart CC left to the employer.
• USACE EM 385-1-1 (2024) — the federal safety manual and its lift plan requirements; use the edition your contract cites.
• ASME P30.1 Planning for Load Handling Activities — the consensus standard for lift planning.
• NCCCO Lift Director certification — the credential for the person who owns the plan.
• NCCCO Handbooks & Forms — the current Lift Director candidate handbook, for exam content, question counts and time limits.

Need people who can write the plan? Call (252) 274-0583 or request a quote — our NCCCO Lift Director exam prep and qualified rigger classes run on your jobsite nationwide and OCONUS, or at our Goldsboro, NC crane operator school.