How Much Does Crane Safety Actually Cost?

What Safety Really Costs—and Why Buyers Back Off

– [Jim Warren] There’s a lot of different, I guess you could say, smart features, safety aspects, that you can do to cranes. And each one of those has a variable in pricing, right? And everybody has caviar dreams until they find out how much it costs.

– [Announcer] For your own safety, you are reminded to stand behind the yellow line.

– [Ben Hengst] How much do safety systems really cost? Welcome to Safety Factor. My name is Ben. Today, we’re going to talk about what the real cost of safety is. You know, how much those systems cost that you’re going to pay for so you can get a better idea of how much you might expect to pay as you try to make your workplace safer.

Gentlemen, you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your background in the industry?

– [Chris Ross] Chris Ross. I’ve been with Mazzella two years. Was formerly in the graphite electrode business for a dozen years, and then had a steel making background with a steel producer for 20 years.

– [Warren] Jim Warren, Director of steel segment, what, almost 30 years in the industry. Nine years in a mill. The rest of it on overhead cranes.

– [Lance White] Lance White, Director of Sales Specialist. 20 years in the industry. Started out in below the hook, slings and rigging, the last 15 or so in overhead cranes.

Why “Make It Safe” Means Different Things to Different Teams

– [Hengst] So how many times has a customer asked you guys to make it safe, and then when you give the, when it comes time to sign the check, they start backing off a little bit. And they’re like-

– [Warren] Oh, a lot. A lot.

– [Hengst] What does the customer mean when they say “make it safe”?

– [Warren] Oh, geez. So there’s a lot of different, I guess you could say, smart features, safety aspects that you can do to cranes. And each one of those has a variable in pricing, right? And everybody has caviar dreams until they find out how much it costs, right?

So yes, they want to make them safe. Yes, they want to make them reliable, right? But when they find out how much that safety actually costs, sometimes they back off from it. And I can’t tell you how many times it’s, “yes, I want to do this, yes, I want the Cadillac. Yes, I want everything,” right? And then you give ’em the price and they say, Oh, well what can we do to get it, you know, half price, right? So.

– [Ross] Yeah. What corners can we cut to make it more manageable, right? Still safe, but make it more cost effective.

– [White] Yeah, I think when safety and features are considered and thought about is in design phase, usually when the engineers are designing the piece of equipment that they want to procure, and then once we provide a cost for that, it’s one reason, you know, you see, they request that all the features be on separate line items, right, so they know where they can go and pick and choose.

But I just think safety is considered more on the front end and design phase than it is once it makes it to the accounting side of the business.

– [Hengst] So why is it? Why is safety mandated up until it’s time to sign the check and then you start peeling off those safety features as you go.

– [White] Every project, capital expenditure or not, all starts with a budget, right, an approved budget. And you got to work within that budget.

Now, to answer why are safety features some of the first to be plucked? I don’t know that I can answer that. I would say that, you know, if you’re not within budget, you’re probably not going to get it at all. So I think that’s just-

Built-In Crane Safety vs. Add-On Safety Systems

– [Warren] Well, if you think about it too, right? So every crane is designed, we’ll use cranes as an example, right? So every crane is designed with safety factors, right? Whether it’s a just a regular production or hot metal, right? They have different safety designs already built into ’em. So they’re inherently designed as being safe pieces of equipment.

Everything that we would do additionally to them makes them “more safer,” right? So that’s why they’re able to look at it and start peeling some of that onion back and saying, okay, well, you know, I don’t think we’re going to be able to manage, you know, the budget and still pull all of these additional safety features into it. So they start pulling some of that back.

– [Hengst] Crane’s an inherently dangerous object, but engineered to be safe already.

– [Warren] Correct, correct.

– [Hengst] Yeah. And so they start peeling off the extra features.

How the Hierarchy of Controls Works in the Real World

– [Warren] And then there’s also baselines, right? So as far as safety concerns are laid out, you know? The first thing you want to try and do is eliminate any safety issues, right? If you can’t eliminate safety issues, then you put in equipment that will kind of deter that safety risk. And then from there, if you can’t deter it, then you actually have to put procedures in place to try and help mitigate it, right? So there’s that level of each step that you can take. Now, when you get down to the point to where you’re just making procedures and policies, it doesn’t cost anything.

The Safety Tradeoff: Extra Features vs. Extra Training

– [White] You know, I think one thing that could lend to this is a lot of the safety features that you see on cranes are new features. You know, the first cranes would go north and south, and a hoist would run east and west, and a hook would run up and down, right? And then along came different types of brakes and drives, and you know, overload protection and interfacing, and, you know, collision avoidance, and all these other things.

We operated a long time before those things were ever created. And so one of the things I believe, that you see happening is you create a budget, you get a price for this piece of equipment that has all the features, and then that price is above your budget. And so where are you going to cut?

And you can justify, maybe cutting out this feature, but still maintain a level of safety by providing additional training to your operators, right? And so, I think that’s probably when, to answer your initial question, why is that? You know, I think that’s probably one thing that lends to that, I would say.

Safety Technology That Helps Prevent Injury

– [Hengst] So let’s talk about some of the options that are out there. So we don’t have to just stick to cranes. We can talk about, you know, Elebia hooks, no-touch tools, things like that. What are the safety options that are out there? And then how much can someone expect to pay for some of these different safety options? Like, you know, at a percentage of their initial cost.

No-Touch Lifting with Elebia Hooks: Options, Features, and Tradeoffs

– [Ross] I know that we’ve been doing a lot of work lately with the Elebias in the steel industry, which is a great tool, a great option for steel producers. It allows no touch operation, right? So you get into the features of it, and I tell everybody, it’s kind of like buying a car, right? You can add as many options as you want on it. Load cells, laser traceability on the ground, remotes with different options, and I think that’s a great start. And so people can look and see, well, what, like Lance said, on certain items, break out every line item for it and then we really want to do this, but what can I whittle away to make this happen?

– [Warren] I mean, you go from a five up to, you know, a hundred ton and, like, he was just saying, every single one of those hooks, there’s the two different models, right? Every one of those hooks you have different, we’ll say, features, right, that you can add to and take away. There’s, like he said, lasers and load cells. I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff you can add to it.

Are Crane Radio Controls Worth It? Safety Benefits vs Cost Concerns

– [White] There’s a wide range of pricing and cost associated to those things, but, you know, just talking, one, that may resonate with a lot of people that’s very simple is, you know, I remember when I first got into this business that one of the first things we would go in and try to sell would be a remote system, you know, a radio control. So that you can disconnect from the crane itself. You don’t have that pendant hanging off the crane.

And you know, the first thing you got when a customer said “no,” was number one, “they’ll lose my transmitters, they’ll leave them on the back of a truck,” or they’ll, you know. And number two, “well, what if it goes down? Then I’m stuck.”

And then, you know, what you have to explain to them is, you know, you can wrap that thing up, and there’s a selector switch up there. You still don’t lose the pendant, you know? And by the way, you know, a new transmitter, depending on which one you got, if it’s just a simple radio, it could be $300, $400 bucks. Plus you get two with a system, right?

So I mean, you can put a simple radio control system on a standard crane, as long as there’s no, nothing really special for $2,500 bucks all in, you know, that’s installed and everything. And depending on which brand you go with, it could be anywhere from $400 bucks to $800 bucks for a replacement transmitter or something like that.

So just to kind of put some numbers with a simple feature that is pretty common, I think, that would probably be the first one that would come to mind for me.

Automated Spreader Beams: Faster Changeouts, Safer Operations

– [Hengst] What other systems are out there?

– [Warren] Well, a lot of the things that we’re doing now are different types of spreader beams, right? They’re multi-beams, getting employees out of harm’s way. So a lot of the mills when they do shipping, right, so they’re either doing shipping into a barge or by rail, any of those things, right?

So what we’re actually doing is we’re getting these beams that the operators are able to switch in and out of, between, whether it be a single magnet or eight magnets, it doesn’t matter, right? Depending on the length of the material that they’re picking up, they can go and switch those out without having to have a maintenance personnel come in, switch over, you know, moving D-rings and power cords, and everything like that. We’re actually doing that all through the crane operator, switching them over and going in and grabbing new material and being able to switch ’em on down to the barge.

– [Ross] Yeah, I’ll piggyback off that because then your change-out operation, you eliminate the potential flash arc hazard swapping out, and then just general time. You’re not having to involve any maintenance people, you’re not having to stop operations. Most of those beams you can swap out, 30 seconds, 45 seconds instead of waiting on your maintenance team to arrive, locking out, tagging out, doing what you need to do.

No Touch® Electrode Handling: Safer, Smarter Lifting

– [Warren] There’s a lot of things that we’re doing, innovatively, with our BTH group that goes towards no touch, right? So it’s, you hear a lot about no-touch tools, which are, you know, the old push, pull sticks and stuff like that. But we’re actually getting into the BTH devices and everything that, you know, moving electrodes for the furnace, a bunch of different scenarios like that, we’re actually creating and designing ways to move those around without even having to get employee involvement with it, right? They’re not having to jump on forklifts and run around and do that. We’re doing that with BTH devices so.

No Touch Lifting Tools: What They Are and What They Cost

– [Hengst] If someone’s looking at a more traditional system, how much percentage would you say that they can look at an increase in price to make their systems a little bit safer?

– [Warren] A little. So again, there’s an à la carte portion, you know what I mean? But you’re probably, to go into, like, instead of doing a standard, if you look at it doing, in a no-touch type of way, probably 15% to 25% more is a good average, right?

So like I said, it just depends because some of these things.

– [Hengst] You can add, stack it and, you know.

– [Warren] Yeah, some of these things are 100% customized, one-off pieces, right? As to others, we’re taking our standard products and we’re able to modify it a little bit through engineering, right? And here you go. But like I said, it really depends on what that product is.

Why Incident Data Should Drive Capital Planning

– [Hengst] If you had a piece of advice that you could give someone about budgeting safety into their projects, what would that piece of advice be?

– [Warren] Well, every customer that we talk to always says there’s no budget for safety.

– [Hengst] Yeah, but there is, right?

– [Warren] But there is.

– [Hengst] Everyone always says that until it’s time to sign the check.

– [Warren] Until they get the pricing, right, so.

– [White] You know, I’m always someone that my first, you know, suggestion would be look at the data, right? Let’s go look at incidents or near misses, and what component, with that system did it involve? And if you have a clear cut, highest percentage involved X component, then that would be where I would allocate my budget first, right?

If you asked me to get specific with that, I would probably need to think about that for a minute. But if 50% of all my near misses or incidents come from up down on the hoist, then I’m going to find a way to allocate some part of my budget to purchase some type of no-touch piece of equipment in that situation.

I’m always proponent of let’s look at the data and make the best decision on what we’ve got there, the information that’s available to us so.

– [Ross] I look at it too, like Lance said. Being around the industry for 30 years, it’s been pretty consistent in steel mill operations. What’s one of the top injuries that you’re going to incur? Hands, fingers, pinch points. So the no-touch is a motivation to eliminate that.

That’s always your, venture to say, that’s probably every steel operation that you go look at their incidents, near misses, reported, recordables, all the majority of ’em is going to be a touching situation, right? It’s going to be reaching out, getting your hands where it shouldn’t be. So we offer alternatives to that.

– [Hengst] Is there a value per dollar on a specific system or something like that, that you would put at the top of your list of being like, hey, if you want the most value for your dollar, this is an easy, simple safety system that you can put in? Or is it just-

– [Warren] It goes back to application, right? So if you’re talking about overhead cranes, just like what Lance said a minute ago, you know, if you’ve got up down, and there’s an issue with it, you know, hands crushed, whatever, you know, we’re going to look at no-touch stuff.

If it’s bridging or trawling, if it’s traverse functions on a crane, right? There’s audible alarms, there’s light warnings, there’s all kinds of stuff. They’ve even got lasers that project down on the floor now, where the actual danger zone is for the load, right? So you can see exactly where the, you need to stay out of, right?

So again, it really goes to what type of application you’re looking at.

Designing Cranes for the Next-Gen Automated Mill

– [Ross] With the evolution of the industry, right, it’s so amazing to see the automation that’s in the steel producer system itself. So you’re trying to, you’re trying to create and keep up with them, and it’s a fluid situation always. And so you’re chasing solutions. So it’s always good to partner up with your steel producers and work together.

– [Warren] Just with our electrode handling right now, we have a complete No Touch® system. And we’ve got one mill that’s actually being built right now that they’re leaning towards being one of the first automated steel mills, right? And that’s actually pretty big. But they’re wanting us to look at how can we, and what we can do to fully automate our complete No Touch® system, for adding electrodes.

– [Hengst] That’s pretty cool.

– [Warren] Yeah.

The Most Cost-Effective Safety Technology Is Training

– [White] To what Chris said, it’s constantly changing. So there are products, and methods and procedures and things that are continuing to be rolled out to make everything safer. But as hard as very smart people are working on to come up with those products and procedures, on the other side, production is working as hard as they can to do it faster and produce more.

– [Warren] Yeah.

– [White] So I’m going to always go back, there are a whole lot of different products, and things, and systems that we would all love to talk to our customers about. But no matter what, I don’t think that you can, will ever be able to replace training and awareness.

While we sell those products and have a lot of subject matter experts in all of those products, if you ask me that question every time, today and 10 years from now, it’s going to be training.

– [Ross] I spoke to several of the vendors and producers today, walking around here, and a lot of it comes back to how the inexperience that is in the industry now, how the turnover is. You’ve got guys at the end of their career, you’ve got a bunch of guys coming in that have never been around.

I mean, like, to Lance’s point, the training becomes imperative. You have to take the time to train them and get ’em exposed to the proper way to do things.

How Can You Learn More About Lifting Safety Systems

– [Hengst] Well, thanks guys for joining. I appreciate it. You can get a hold of Chris, Jim, Lance at mazellacompanies.com or any of our other experts.

Check out our learning center. We have a ton of information in there. You can watch Safety Factor wherever you listen to your podcasts or you can watch it on The Lifting and Rigging channel on YouTube. Thanks for listening. Stay safe out there.