Rigger Level 1 vs. Level 2: What Each NCCCO Card Covers

By Michael StormantAug 29, 2026Updated Oct 13, 202627 min read

Rigger level 1 vs level 2 is not about seniority — it is scope. Level I proves a rigger can execute routine hitches and hardware correctly. Level II proves a rigger can plan the lift: weigh the load, find its center of gravity, run the sling math, and rig the pick nobody has a template for. Here is the side-by-side comparison, what each card covers, what each exam asks, five original practice questions to test yourself, and the honest answer to the “level 3” question people keep searching.

Rigger Level 1 vs Level 2, Side by Side

Print this one and hand it to whoever signs the training PO. It is the whole distinction on one screen. The rows on NCCCO’s definitions, outlines and tasks come from NCCCO’s rigger certification page and the current Rigger candidate handbook; the rest is how the two cards map to field roles on the crews we train.

Both levels share the same eligibility basics on NCCCO’s rigger page: be at least 18, comply with CCO’s Substance Abuse Policy and Code of Ethics, and pass a written and a practical exam. Both cover the same equipment families — synthetic, chain, wire rope and metal mesh slings, plus rigging hardware. What changes between the levels is who does the deciding.

Scope, Not Seniority

A twenty-year ironworker can hold a Level I card and still be the best hand on the crew. A two-year rigger can hold Level II because the company sent them to the class and they can run the sling math cold. Neither fact is an insult to the other person. The CCO rigger program splits on what the rigger is responsible for deciding — not tenure, not pay grade, not who has the key to the gang box.

Level I executes a lift somebody else already figured out. Level II is the somebody. Once you see the split that way, the crew-planning question mostly answers itself. Count your picks. How many arrive with a stamped weight, marked pick points, and a rigging diagram? And how many arrive as an unlabeled weldment on a lowboy at 6 a.m. with a driver who wants to be gone by seven?

Crews that answer “mostly the first kind” need Level I depth and one or two Level II hands. Crews that answer “mostly the second kind” are running Level II work whether or not anyone on site holds the card.

What Rigger Level I Covers

Level I is the working credential for the rigging most crews do most days: repetitive, well-defined picks with known loads and standard gear. NCCCO’s own definition says it plainly — the load weight, center of gravity, rigging, and configuration are provided, or known to the rigger from experience and on-the-job training, before the rigging starts. A certified Level I rigger demonstrates that they can select the right sling and hardware for a routine lift, apply the standard hitches — vertical, bridle, basket, choker — inspect rigging before use and pull damaged gear from service, and work inside the lift plan someone else prepared. It is the “execute correctly, every time” card, and for the crew members hooking, unhooking, and guiding loads all day, it maps exactly to the work.

One naming note before going further: 3P Safety’s own Qualified Rigger Level I and Level II classes are employer qualification training under OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1404, not NCCCO cards. This post is about the NCCCO certifications.

Underneath that summary sits a specific body of knowledge. A Level I rigger is expected to know it cold:

• Sling types and their behavior. Synthetic web, round slings, wire rope, and alloy steel chain each fail differently and each has its own rejection criteria. A round sling with a nicked cover is a different conversation than a chain with a stretched link.
• Reading the tag, and what happens when there is no tag. Rated capacity is on the tag, and capacity changes with the hitch. ASME B30.9 is blunt about it: a sling whose identification is missing or illegible comes out of service. Not “gets used carefully.” Out.
• Hardware fundamentals. Shackle pin fully seated, never side-loaded past what the manufacturer allows. Eye bolts that are shouldered when the pull is anything but vertical. Hoist rings where the load will swing. Wire rope clips oriented correctly — saddle on the live end, every time. ASME B30.26 covers this hardware, and B30.20 covers the engineered lifting devices that hang below the hook.
• Edge protection and D/d. Softeners at every sharp corner, and enough bend radius that you are not quietly cutting the sling’s capacity in half on a beam flange.
• Pre-use inspection and the red-tag call. Every sling, every shift, before it goes on the hook — the rule is in 29 CFR 1926.251 for construction and 1910.184 for general industry, and neither one gives you a “we were busy” exemption.
• Load control. Tag lines, keeping hands out of pinch points, staying out of the fall zone once the load is airborne, and clean communication with the operator or signal person.

That inspection duty is the piece employers underestimate, because it happens all day long with nobody watching. Formal rigging gear and sling inspection training is what turns it into a habit instead of a glance. The field criteria for the red-tag call itself — the specific damage that ends a sling’s life — are in rigging gear that should never make the lift.

What Level II Adds: The Math and the Judgment

Level II is the planning credential. NCCCO’s definition starts where Level I ends: a Level II rigger knows and demonstrates everything at Level I, then selects rigging components and procedures based on rigging capacity, and does it unsupervised — identifying lift points, inspecting the lift points as well as the rigging, and understanding load dynamics. In practice, what the second card adds is the ability to rig a non-routine pick from first principles:

• Estimating load weight when nothing convenient is stamped on the side — from drawings, dimensions, and material weights. A rigger who can break an odd casting into rectangles, cylinders, and a subtracted bore, then multiply it out against a density table, is the one you want answering the phone when the paperwork is wrong.
• Finding the center of gravity, including the asymmetric loads where guessing wrong means a load that rolls the moment it leaves the ground. The hook has to end up over the CG. If it does not, the load will move it there for you.
• Running sling tension — the load-angle math that decides whether a leg is loafing or quietly overloaded. Our worked sling angle examples are exactly the kind of problem a Level II rigger owns.
• Understanding unequal leg loading. On a three- or four-leg bridle rigged to a rigid load, you cannot assume the legs share evenly. Conservative practice treats two legs as carrying the load unless the rigging equalizes. Level II is where that stops being trivia and starts being the reason a sling did not part.
• Selecting rigging for unusual loads — oversize, off-center, fragile, or one-of-a-kind picks where the answer is engineered, not remembered. That includes knowing when a spreader or equalizer beam is the right tool, which is where below-the-hook lifting device training earns its keep.
• Planning turns, upends, and multi-crane picks — the moves where the load’s geometry changes mid-lift and the rigging has to stay in capacity through every degree of it.

Sling Angle Is Where Most of the Math Lives

If you take one table off this page, take this one. Sling tension does not care how strong the rigger feels about it. As the legs flatten out toward horizontal, tension climbs fast, and it climbs on the same slings that were fine on the last pick when the crane had more headroom.

The load angle factor is the multiplier: measure the angle between the sling leg and the horizontal, then multiply each leg’s share of the load by the factor. The right column runs a 4,000 lb load on a two-leg bridle — 2,000 lb per leg before the angle gets a vote.

At 30 degrees, each leg is carrying the entire load. All of it. ASME B30.9 treats angles below 30 degrees as off the table unless a qualified person approves them, and there is a reason that line got drawn where it did. A Level I rigger should recognize a flat sling angle and say something. A Level II rigger should be able to tell you the number before the load leaves the ground.

What the Exams Ask

Both levels are written plus practical. Candidates who prepare for only the first half walk into the second and discover that knowing the answer and doing the thing are different skills, graded by different people, on the same day.

The Written Side

NCCCO publishes an outline for each written exam, and the two outlines tell the story better than any summary. The Level I outline covers four domains — scope of the rigging activity, technical knowledge, inspection, and execution of the rigging activity — and asks the candidate to know how to verify the load weight. The Level II outline adds two domains, planning the rigging activity and selection of rigging components, and its scope domain asks you to calculate the load weight, determine the center of gravity, and calculate the tensions on slings and rigging hardware. Inspection appears on both, with the ASME frequent-inspection criteria on Level I and the periodic-inspection criteria on Level II.

Expect capacity and inspection questions, hitch selection, hardware use, and load-handling procedure at Level I — the knowledge a rigger uses without pausing. One detail matters for how you study: the current handbook permits a calculator on the Level II written but not on Level I, so Level I arithmetic — share per leg, a simple angle factor, a tag rating in a different hitch — has to come out of your head. Question counts, time limits, and eligibility rules are CCO’s and they change; pull the current rigger candidate handbook and NCCCO’s published Level I and Level II written exam outlines before you schedule anything.

The Practical Side

The practical is hands-on and scored by an examiner while you work. NCCCO’s current practical exam outlines describe four tasks at Level I — a pre-use rigging inspection, rigging hitches, rigging connections, and basic knots (sheet bend, clove hitch, inside bowline, square knot, and two half hitches) — and two at Level II: rig a frame for a level lift, and rig it so it can be rotated 90 degrees under control. That Level II pair is the whole card in miniature. You cannot make a load lift level or turn cleanly without finding its center of gravity first.

The tasks can change, but the failure modes we see in prep are stubbornly consistent, and they are almost never about strength or speed:

• Hardware assembled wrong — shackle pin not seated, clips reversed, an unshouldered eye bolt taking an angular pull.
• No softener where the sling crosses a hard edge.
• A hitch that works but is not the right hitch for the load’s geometry.
• Sling angles allowed to flatten because the headroom was tight and nobody recalculated.
• Sloppy load control — no tag line, a hand in a pinch point, or a body inside the fall zone.
• Skipping the inspection step because the gear “is obviously fine.” It is a scored step. Do it out loud.

Candidates chasing the Level II practical specifically should train on real gear, with a real load, under someone who will stop them mid-task. Reading about center of gravity does not build the reflex of stepping back and eyeballing where the hook actually needs to be.

Practice Questions: Rigger Level 1 vs Level 2

Five original 3P Safety practice questions, written by our instructors to show the difference in what each level asks of you. They are not NCCCO exam questions, and nothing here comes from the secured CCO item bank. Questions 1 and 2 are Level I in flavor; 3 through 5 are Level II. Work them with a pencil before you open the answers — and do number 2 without a calculator.

Scored three or more? You are thinking like the level you are aiming for. Missed the math on 3 through 5? That is the Level II gap, and it is the material our rigger certification practice test and the Level II class drill hardest.

A Realistic Course Outline

Ask five providers for a “rigger level 1 course outline” and you will get five different documents. The good ones cover the same ground, because the exam and the standards define it. Here is the honest shape of it.

Level I modules:

1. Regulatory frame — OSHA 1926 Subpart CC, 1926.251, and where ASME B30.9, B30.20, and B30.26 fit.
2. Sling types, construction, and failure behavior.
3. Rated capacity, tags, hitch configuration, and the capacity change each hitch causes.
4. Hardware: shackles, eye bolts, hoist rings, turnbuckles, wire rope clips.
5. Pre-use inspection and removal-from-service criteria, hands on damaged gear.
6. Sling angle awareness, edge protection, and D/d.
7. Load control, tag lines, fall zone discipline, and communication with the operator.
8. Practical drills, then the written and practical exams.

Level II adds:

1. Load weight estimation from prints, dimensions, and material densities.
2. Center of gravity determination, including asymmetric and multi-component loads.
3. Sling tension calculation and load angle factors, worked until they are automatic.
4. Unequal leg loading on multi-leg bridles and when equalization actually equalizes.
5. Engineered lifting devices, spreader and equalizer beams, and their rated configurations.
6. Turning, upending, and rotating loads without losing control of the geometry.
7. Building and documenting the lift plan itself.

New hands who are not ready to sit an exam yet are better served starting in basic rigging training and testing later. Sending an unprepared candidate to a practical because the class was already booked is how retest fees get invented.

The OSHA Lens: Both Cards Serve One Word — “Qualified”

There is no federal rigger license at either level. What OSHA requires is a qualified rigger — the 29 CFR 1926.32(m) standard of knowledge, training, and demonstrated ability — during crane assembly and disassembly under 1926.1404, and under 1926.1425 whenever workers are in the fall zone hooking, unhooking, or guiding a load. The determination belongs to the employer. That is the part people miss: OSHA does not hand you a rigger card, it hands you a burden of proof.

NCCCO certification at the level that matches the work is the cleanest evidence an employer can put behind that determination, precisely because it is third-party tested and independently verifiable. It is not automatically the whole answer. The certification says this person passed a national exam; the employer still owes a defensible link between the exam and the rigging actually being performed on this site, on this load. The same gap trips up crane operators, which is why the employer evaluation requirement gets its own article. The full breakdown of how certified, qualified, and competent interlock lives in our three-words guide.

On Federal Work: EM 385-1-1 Puts It in Writing

Corps of Engineers jobs add a document. EM 385-1-1 (2024) defines a qualified rigger as one who meets the manual’s qualified-person criteria and is “designated by the employer in writing” to rig loads or oversee rigging (paragraph 15-2.a). The minimum qualifications in 15-3.a include knowledge, training, and experience in safe rigging “to include calculating loads, load weights, and safe capacities,” and an age of at least 18; 15-3.b lists the training topics, from load calculations to inspection procedures. The manual does not name an NCCCO level, and it leaves the employer to decide who is qualified for which rigging task. But read that minimum against the two outlines: if your federal riggers will be calculating load weights themselves, that is the Level II outline, not Level I. Work to the edition your contract cites, and put the written designation in the file before the crew mobilizes.

Is There a Rigger Level 3?

Not from NCCCO — the CCO rigger program certifies Level I and Level II, full stop. The three-level ladder people search for usually belongs to somewhere else: training curricula that teach rigging across three courses, military and federal programs with their own tiering, and a handful of local licensing schemes with their own master-rigger grades. None of that changes the federal picture. On an OSHA construction site the question is whether the rigger is qualified for the rigging being performed, and the two CCO levels are the industry-standard way to prove it.

If a spec, a prequal form, or a GC contract asks for a “Level 3 rigger,” do not guess. Ask them which program they mean. The answer is usually either a Level II CCO card backed by documented lift-planning experience, or a specific local license. Those are not interchangeable, and finding out which one the spec meant after the crew mobilizes is expensive.

State and Local Rules Sit on Top of the Federal Rule

Riggers in some states go looking for a level that is written into a state statute rather than a CCO handbook — Maryland’s Title 9 rigger language is the one we field questions about most. The rule of thumb: the federal standard sets the floor, and states and cities are free to build on it. A handful of municipalities license riggers directly, with their own application, their own tiers, and their own renewal cycle that has nothing to do with a CCO card’s five-year clock.

The trap is the calendar. A local license and a CCO card renew on different schedules, and the outfit tracking both in one place is the one that does not discover an expired local card the Monday a job starts. Read the local scope with the same care: what a given license actually covers, who it attaches to, and when it renews are all set locally, and none of it is inferable from the card in a rigger’s wallet. We run programs across the country from our training locations, and these crossover questions come up on nearly every multi-state job.

What Rigger Certification Costs

Nobody publishes one number, because there is not one number. What there is, is a predictable set of line items — and the biggest one is usually not the exam.

Per-candidate cost drops sharply once you are training a group, because mobilization and instructor time spread across more people while exam fees stay per head. That math, and the rest of what drives a training quote, is broken down in what drives crane school cost, and the CCO fee side has its own page in our NCCCO certification cost guide. Get a real quote for the actual headcount before you compare anything.

Which Level Does Your Crew Need?

Map the cards to how your lifts actually get planned:

• Most of the crew: Level I. If the loads are known and the hitches are standard, Level I matches the work and satisfies the qualified-rigger evidence for it.
• The lift planner: Level II. Every crew that ever rigs an unusual pick needs at least one hand who can run the numbers — the natural Level II holder is the lead rigger or the foreman who signs the lift plan.
• Both, usually. The strongest pattern we see: Level I across the rigging crew, Level II on the leads, and signal person certification layered where the same hands direct the crane.
• One Level II is not enough on a two-shift job. If your only planner is on days, night shift is either waiting on a phone call or improvising. Neither is a plan.

The failure pattern we see most: a company gets eight riggers certified at Level I, declares the box checked, and then hands that crew a transformer with no weight stamp and no pick points. Nothing about the Level I card covers that pick. Train and test to the hardest lift you actually do, not the average one. Our rigging training overview matches each class to the person who needs it, from basic rigging to the qualified rigger and signal person classes.

Who Does What on Lift Day

A mixed crew works when the roles are written into the lift plan, not just the names:

• Rigging lead (the Level II hand): owns the weight, the center of gravity, and the leg tensions, checks the crew’s rigging before the hook takes load, and has the authority to stop the rigging when something does not match the plan.
• Riggers (Level I): each has an assigned pick point or tag line, inspects the gear they hang, and rigs to the plan as written.
• Signal person: keeps eyes on the load and the operator, not on a shackle pin. When the same hand rigs and signals, the rigging is finished and checked before the signaling starts.
• The two-minute debrief: after a non-routine pick, ask what weighed more than the paper said, what took longer than planned, and what changes next time. That turns one lift into training for the next one.

How to Get Ready

Book the exam last, not first. Work our rigger certification practice test before anybody puts a date on a calendar — it shows where a candidate actually stands, and it is a lot cheaper than finding out at the test site. Then get the free source material: NCCCO posts its Rigger Reference Manual and Rigger Reference Booklet on its rigger reference materials page, and the booklet carries the capacity information the written exams may draw on. Learn your way around it before test day, not during the exam.

Two habits separate the candidates who pass clean from the ones who retest. First, they practice the math with a pencil on real load geometry, not by re-reading a slide. Second, they run the practical tasks narrating each step out loud, because that is how an examiner knows the inspection actually happened. Neither habit costs anything except the willingness to look slow for an afternoon. Plan the two halves together, too: under NCCCO’s current policy the written and practical can be taken in either order, and you have 12 months after passing the first to pass the other.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between rigger level 1, 2, and 3?

NCCCO has two rigger levels, not three. Level I covers routine rigging with known loads and standard hitches; Level II adds load weight estimation, center of gravity, sling tension calculation, and rigging for non-routine or engineered picks. Any “Level 3” you encounter comes from a training curriculum, a military or federal program, or a local licensing scheme — not from the CCO rigger certification program.

Do you have to pass Level I before taking Level II?

Eligibility and sequencing rules are CCO’s and are published in the current rigger candidate handbook and on NCCCO’s rigger certification page — read them before booking, because policies are specific. The practical guidance does not change either way: test at the level that matches the rigging you genuinely plan and perform. A Level II card earned by a rigger who has never estimated a load weight in the field helps nobody, starting with the rigger.

Is Level I enough for hooking loads in the fall zone?

OSHA’s requirement at 1926.1425 is a qualified rigger for that work, and the employer makes the qualification determination. For routine picks with known loads and standard hitches, Level I certification plus a documented employer evaluation is strong evidence of exactly that. The moment the work turns non-routine — unusual loads, engineered lifts, calculated tensions — the qualification bar rises with it, and that is Level II territory.

Can a Level I rigger work on a tandem or critical lift?

Usually yes, rigging what the plan calls for — but not writing the plan. NCCCO describes Level I as simple, repetitive rigging where the weight, center of gravity, rigging, and configuration are provided or known, and a tandem pick is the opposite of that. OSHA’s multiple-crane rule, 1926.1432, requires the plan to be developed by a qualified person and the lift to be run by a lift director, and EM 385-1-1 treats any lift made with more than one piece of load handling equipment as a critical lift that needs a written critical lift plan. So the weights, the center of gravity, and the leg tensions belong to a Level II-capable lead or the engineer, and the Level I hands rig and control the load inside that plan. Who reviews and signs a critical lift is covered in our critical lift guide.

Is there an NCCCO rigger 1 or rigger 2 practice test?

Yes — practice questions are the single best diagnostic before you pay for an exam, at either level. Use them to find the weak module, not to memorize answers; the real exam draws from a much larger bank than any practice set. For Level II candidates in particular, score yourself on the calculation items separately. If weight estimation and sling tension are where the misses cluster, no amount of hardware review will fix the result.

What is on the Rigger Level II practical exam?

Hands-on rigging tasks scored by an examiner, with more emphasis on judgment than Level I. NCCCO’s current outline lists two tasks: rigging a frame so it lifts level, and rigging it so it can be rotated 90 degrees under control. Current task lists and scoring are published by CCO in the candidate handbook and the Level II practical exam outline, and they are the only authority worth quoting. What we can tell you from running the prep: candidates lose points on inspection steps they skipped, hardware assembled almost right, and sling angles they never recalculated after the geometry changed. Train on real gear and real loads.

How much does NCCCO rigger certification cost?

There is no single published figure, and any provider quoting you one without asking questions first is quoting something other than your job. The exam fees are CCO’s and are per level, per candidate. Everything else — prep training, travel, whose gear the practical runs on, retests — moves with your headcount and location. Two riggers at one level and twelve riggers across both levels are different orders of magnitude on the invoice and different numbers per head. Get a quote written against your actual roster.

Does a state or city rigger license replace NCCCO certification?

Sometimes, sometimes not, and only the issuing authority can tell you which. Local rigger licensing schemes — the Maryland Title 9 language and the municipal master-rigger tiers people search for — run on their own applications, tiers, and renewal clocks. A CCO card might satisfy the requirement outright, or it might count as supporting evidence alongside whatever else that jurisdiction asks a rigger to file. Call the authority, not a training vendor — ours included. What no local scheme does is relieve your employer of the federal qualified-rigger duty on an OSHA construction site. Crews working across state lines usually hold the national credential and add whatever local paper the jurisdiction demands on top.

How long do rigger certifications last?

Five years, like NCCCO’s operator credentials. Under NCCCO’s current rigger policy, recertification means passing the written exam during the 12 months before the card expires — no practical is required — and a Level II holder keeps both levels current by passing the Level II written. There is no grace period: a lapsed card means the full written and practical exams again. Track rigger cards on the same expiration calendar as operator cards — a crew’s lead rigger being out of qualification is the kind of gap nobody notices until a GC prequal or an inspector does.

Does rigger certification include signal person?

No — they are separate NCCCO credentials with separate exams, because OSHA treats them as separate qualifications. The overlap is real, though: the same worker frequently rigs the load and then signals the pick, which is why we routinely train rigger and signal person together in one engagement, so the crew’s documentation lands in the file at once. NCCCO also lines up the calendars: when a certified rigger adds a signalperson designation, it expires on the same date as the rigger card, so one renewal window covers both.

And before any signal exam, know the five signals crews cross most: the most-missed crane hand signals.

Where do I find NCCCO rigger training near me?

Two ways in. Send hands to a scheduled class, or have the program come to your jobsite — which is what most crews of six or more end up doing, because the practical runs on the gear they use every day and nobody loses two days to travel. Tell us the site, the headcount, and the levels you need, and we will tell you what is schedulable.

Authoritative References

• NCCCO Rigger Level I and Rigger Level II Certification Overview — NCCCO’s definition of each level, eligibility, time frames, and recertification.
• NCCCO Rigger Candidate Handbook (current edition) — the written outlines, practical tasks, and certification policies in one document.
• NCCCO Rigger Level II Written Exam Outline — the Level II knowledge domains, linked to the Level I outline and the free reference materials.
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1425 — keeping clear of the load and the qualified-rigger requirement for hooking, unhooking, and guiding.
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1404 — assembly and disassembly, where rigging must be done by a qualified rigger.
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.32 — the definition of a qualified person.
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1432 — multiple-crane lifts: the plan, the qualified person, and the lift director.
• USACE EM 385-1-1 (2024) — Chapter 15 qualified rigger designation and qualifications; use the edition your contract cites.

Need Level I hands and a Level II lead? Call (252) 274-0583 or request a quote — qualified rigger training and NCCCO rigger exam prep on your jobsite nationwide and OCONUS, or at our Goldsboro, NC crane operator school.