A ready-to-deliver toolbox talk for foremen and supervisors. 8-10 minute spoken script plus briefing register for operative sign-in.
Lifting operations, anything from a telehandler putting a pack of blocks onto a scaffold to a crane lift, are high-risk because a dropped or swinging load, or a machine tipping, kills people fast. This talk covers planning the lift, checking the gear, the safe working load, slinging, and staying out from under the load.
When a lift goes wrong it goes wrong in seconds and there's rarely a second chance, a load drops, a sling fails, a machine tips, and whoever's underneath or alongside doesn't get clear in time. Most lifting incidents come down to the same handful of things: no proper plan, overloaded or damaged gear, or people standing where they shouldn't. Get those right and lifting is routine, get them wrong and it's a fatality.
Spoken script for the supervisor. Read or paraphrase, in order.
Under LOLER, lifting operations have to be properly planned, supervised and carried out safely. That means a competent person plans it and an appointed person oversees anything beyond the simplest lift. You should know the plan before you start, what's being lifted, how, by whom, and where everyone stands. If there's no plan and you're not sure, stop and ask, don't make up a lift on the spot, because that's when people get hurt.
You have to know the weight of the load, and the safe working load of everything in the chain, the machine, the slings, the shackles, the eyebolts. The weakest item sets your limit, and you never exceed it. Remember the rating is for a sound item used correctly, not a worn one, so don't run it to the line. Guessing the weight of a load is one of the most common ways gear gets overloaded and fails.
The wider the angle between the sling legs, the more load goes through each leg, and it climbs fast as the angle opens out. So slinging a load with the legs spread wide can overload slings that would be fine at a narrower angle. Use the right length slings, keep the angles sensible, and don't just hook on and hope it'll take it. The geometry is doing things you can't see.
Look the gear over before every lift, slings for cuts, fraying, kinks or damaged stitching, chains for stretched or distorted links, shackles for the right pins and no spreading. It needs to be in date for its thorough examination, and lifting accessories get examined at least every six months. Anything damaged or out of test gets quarantined, not used. The tag tells you it's been checked, no tag, no lift.
This is the simple one that saves lives. Nobody goes under the load, ever, and there's an exclusion zone around the lift that people stay out of. Loads swing, slings slip and things drop without warning. Steady and guide a load with tag lines from a safe distance, not with your hands up by the hook in among the pinch points. If you wouldn't want it landing on you, don't be stood there.
There's one slinger or banksman giving the signals, with agreed hand signals or radio, so the operator isn't being waved at by three different people. Everyone else stays clear and stays quiet. And if the operator loses sight of the signaller at any point, the lift stops until they can see each other again. Mixed signals on a lift is how loads end up in the wrong place, or on someone.
The machine needs firm, level ground, outriggers fully out and on mats where needed, and watch the ground doesn't give way near excavations. Check for overhead power lines before the jib or the load goes up, and keep the exclusion distance off them. And lifting stops in high wind, because a load turns into a sail and the machine gets unstable, no lift is worth chancing that.
What the supervisor should be actively spotting on walk-arounds.
Ask one or two of these at the end. Confirms attention more than a silent nod.
A toolbox talk is generic by design. It works on every site. Your RAMS isn't. Briefkit writes a site-specific RAMS for your actual job: the hazards, sequence, PPE, competencies and emergency arrangements that apply to this work, at this address, by this team. £30 per document.
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