Sign cranes & safety

We have all seen sign cranes operating at work sites and in various locations where signs must be mounted at varying heights. These are remarkable pieces of equipment and the personnel who use them are highly trained to be able to use them effectively while maintaining safety. Safety does not just pertain to the people working with the equipment, either. It involves everyone who works in and around the equipment. One of the major risks with sign cranes actually involves electrical hazards.

When a sign crane makes contact with some kind of power source, the electrical discharge that occurs can be very dangerous. This danger is not just for the sign truck’s operator, but for anyone who happens to be in the vicinity when an electrical problem occurs. You probably know when you are driving down the road that you never get near, or drive over, a “live wire” that is down across the road. Utility companies take the danger of such downed wires very seriously. They are not safe for you to come into contact with, even in your vehicle with its insulating tires. They must be given a wide berth for that reason.

Now imagine that you are operating a piece of equipment whose purpose is to position and mount signs. Those signs are often placed at heights that put you very near utility wires and the electrical hazards they represent. There is never an excuse for making contact with electrical wires. All personnel, from those planning the job to those operating the sign crane, should formulate and then execute a plan that accounts for the safety of everyone concerned. This involves how to position and place the sign without causing any damage or contact with the power lines in the area. Any particularly hazardous job areas should be declared off-limits as hazardous and avoided completely. This includes an area roughly three meters around any source of electrical power, which is never a safe place to work and certainly not a place to position a sign crane.

Beyond such danger zones, sign truck operators must always consider every power source to be potentially hazardous. Just as a gun should never be considered “unloaded” and treated casually from a safety perspective, a power line should never be considered not to be energized and therefore safe, even if local power has been cut for the duration of the job. Operators and associated personnel and workers must always assume that a power source that could have power does have power, even when it does not, for purpose of proper conduct while on the job site.

The key to preventing electrical problems with sign cranes and with any heavy equipment is to engage in proper and thorough training before the fact. Workers should always be well informed regarding what they are supposed to do and how they should do it. They key to this is always rigorous training, whether that training involves sign cranes.