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Vent: my rigging hand told me to slow down and I argued with him for 20 minutes
So we're setting a 4,200 lb AC unit on the roof of a building off 5th in Austin last Tuesday and my rigger, Vic, who's been doing this 26 years, keeps telling me to ease off the swing. I'm thinking I've got plenty of margin, the load chart says I'm fine, so I push back. He says fine, your call, but watch the tag line. Two minutes later the thing starts drifting and I have to chase it with the boom. Nothing bad happened, but I felt dumb. The part that got me is he didn't say I told you so. He just said the chart doesn't know about the wind coming off that gap between the buildings. I've been running cranes 9 years and I still think about that gap now on every pick. What's the one thing an old hand told you that stuck?
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faithb786d ago
Man, this hits home. I was setting trusses on a barn build and my old lead Ray kept telling me to watch the sun angle on the north side because the ground crew couldn't see my hand signals in the glare. I brushed him off, figured they knew the plan. Sure enough, I gave a signal and half the crew was squinting the wrong way, and a truss swung wide and clipped a stack of lumber. Ray didn't say a word after, just helped me restack it, and that silence was louder than any lecture. Now I check where the sun is before every pick, even on cloudy days. Those old guys see stuff the load chart and the manual never will.
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