OSHA’s operator evaluation requirement – Did you know there’s another step after certification?

Anna DeBattiste

It’s been a while since we talked about compliance!  Our instructors and practical examiners have become increasingly aware that very few companies in New England seem to know about OSHA’s operator evaluation/qualification requirement, so here’s a refresher.

During the stakeholder comment period back in the 2010s, OSHA realized that operator certification alone is not enough.  Certification establishes a baseline of knowledge and skill, but operators must then be observed and evaluated on the specific equipment they run and the type of tasks they are doing, and that evaluation must be documented and made available at the worksite.  This is similar to the 2010 requirement that signal persons and riggers must have documentation showing qualification. 

Here’s a helpful analogy I stole from Crane Hotline Magazine: “Certification would be like passing the test to get an automobile driver’s license. Evaluation of competence would be like an employer making sure a licensed driver has the skill and experience to drive the company’s fully-loaded pickup truck on ice and snow before letting him or her drive in the winter.”

Are you shaking your head in exasperation at yet another red-tape regulation?  Think of it this way.  You probably already do this in an informal way, you just don’t document it.  You aren’t really putting operators whose skills you’re not confident about on your most expensive piece of equipment, are you?  OSHA simply says you have to document your observation of the operator’s equipment- and task-specific competence and keep it on file.  You don’t have to hire a third party to do this, you can do it in-house. 

Until an operator is both certified and evaluated, s/he is considered an operator-in-training and can only operate under the direction and continuous monitoring of a qualified trainer.  The qualified trainer can also be the evaluator. The trainer must meet all the following requirements:

• Must be an employee or agent of the operator-in-training's employer.  If you are a one-person operation, or a small employer without the in-house expertise to have your own trainer, you can hire someone to be the agent (like us, of course!)
• Must have the knowledge, training, and experience necessary to direct the operator-in-training on the equipment in use.  Note that your trainer does not have to be a certified operator (although it certainly couldn’t hurt, and might help you establish the trainer’s qualifications)
• Must be in direct line of sight and continuously monitor the operator-in-training, without doing anything that would detract from their ability to observe.  The trainer can take short breaks as long as they last no longer than 15 minutes and are no more often than one break per hour.  Before taking a break, the trainer must tell the operator-in-training exactly what to do during the break and what the limitations are, and must make sure these tasks are within the trainee’s ability.

Once your operator is certified and ready for the evaluation, here is what OSHA says the goals of evaluation are:

• To ensure the operator has the ability to safely perform the assigned work
• To ensure the operator has “the necessary skills, knowledge, and ability to recognize and avert risks in order to safely operate the actual equipment that will be used”

These performance-based evaluations are meant to be more directly focused on the operator’s ability to perform assigned work than the general knowledge and skills tested during the certification process.  In other words, they are task- and equipment-specific, and the operator must demonstrate “the skills and knowledge, as well as the ability to recognize and avert risk, necessary to operate the equipment safely, including those specific to the safety devices, operational aids, software, and the size and configuration of the equipment. Size and configuration includes, but is not limited to, lifting capacity, boom length, attachments, luffing jib, and counterweight set-up.”  The evaluation should also include specific activities that might be required such as blind lifts, multi-crane lifts, and hoisting personnel.

John Lavoie, operations manager for Miller Construction in Vermont, says, “I’ve been doing operator evaluations for about six years, and it’s a pretty simple process.  I keep the documentation in each crane, along with the operator’s certification, and I do get asked for the documentation by some of our customers. It typically takes me less time to do an evaluation than it takes to set the crane up.” 

Employers do not have to evaluate their operators in every possible configuration of equipment or combination of configuration and boom length, etc., that would factor into a crane’s capacity. Additional evaluations are only required when the operator’s existing skills, knowledge, or ability to identify and avert risk are not enough for that operator to operate the equipment in a new model or configuration.

The documentation of evaluation must include the operator’s name, the evaluator’s name, the date of the evaluation, and the make, model, and configuration of the equipment on which the operator was evaluated. But the documentation does not need to be in any particular format. You have the flexibility to capture this information using your own existing systems.

The employer must also provide re-training in relevant topics for each operator when there is any indication that retraining is necessary. Triggers for re-training might include feedback from an onsite supervisor or safety manager, contractor, or other person who observed that the operator was operating equipment unsafely; an OSHA citation; a crane near-miss; or any other incident that indicates unsafe operation of the crane.

Finally, how can New England Crane School help, if you need help?  We have the following options:

• For organizations without the ability or desire to train and/or evaluate operators in-house, we offer third-party operator evaluation services on an hourly consulting basis.  We also offer private practical training services for rookies on an hourly basis.
• If you have a potential employee in-house that can train and evaluate your operators but need some help setting up the program and making sure that person is qualified, we can also help you with that on an hourly consulting basis.
• Finally, if you feel you have the resources to handle operator qualification in-house but would like some help with a documentation template, we have a free checklist here that you’re welcome to use.  Note that it goes beyond OSHA’s minimum documentation requirements, so you may wish to adapt it to a simpler version.