Booking the crane and hoist so every trade gets its lift
At 06:50 the curtain-wall foreman and the mechanical foreman are both at the tower crane's base, each with a truck due at 07:00 and each sure the crane is theirs. The operator is waiting for someone to decide. Yesterday it was the roofer and the drywall delivery.
Book the crane and the hoist through one person, on one sheet, by the afternoon before; give out slots by schedule priority, critical-path work first; and settle clashes before the foremen go home. Morning fights come from informal booking, with every foreman planning around a lift nobody confirmed. The sheet decides when a lift happens. Whether it can go ahead, and how, stays with the lift plan, the operator and the qualified people directing lifts.
- Name one person who books; a lift promised by anyone else, the operator included, is not booked.
- Set a cut-off, say 13:00 the day before. Each request gives the trade, load weight, pick and landing areas, time needed and any lift plan. In British Columbia, for example, the operator and riggers must be told each load's weight, and a critical lift, as the regulation defines it, needs a written lift plan, communicated at a pre-job meeting just before the lift.
- Rank by the schedule: critical-path work first, then near-critical, then the rest. A lift tied to a fixed window, like a street closure or an hourly crane rental, may go first.
- Book the hoist in blocks: crews at start of shift, lunch and end of day; material between.
- Issue the sheet by 15:00, check it against the delivery bookings, and call every trade whose slot moved.
- Confirm it at the morning huddle against the day's wind forecast. Whether wind stops a lift is for the operator and the lift plan to decide, not the sheet; when it does, re-slot the lifts that lost their window.
Common mistakes
- First come, first served.
- Letting the operator choose between trades.
- Booking every minute, with no room for a slow lift.
Checklist
Tomorrow's booking sheet
- Requests closed at a set time, through one person
- Each lift: load weight, pick and landing areas, time
- Lift plan named where required
- Ranked by the critical path; fixed windows marked
- Hoist blocks for crews
- Actual times recorded, slots adjusted weekly
Check your understanding
The forming foreman wants the crane all day, every day, because his work is critical. How do you answer?
