Raising the bar: excavator lifting operations
Download free, practical templates and guidance documents to support consistency, clarity and safe practice in excavator lifting operations. Now revised with industry's feedback and also available in Word format.
Following our guidance for tower cranes, Darren Biggs, Lead Appointed Person at Sir Robert McAlpine, introduces a suite of practical templates for excavator lifting operations.
Excavators are increasingly used as lifting appliances within the construction industry, with many modern machines designed and rated for lifting duties. However, approaches to the planning, risk assessment, and documentation of excavator lifting operations remain inconsistent.
Current Appointed Person training frameworks are predominantly focused on mobile crane lifting operations and do not generally provide structured or detailed coverage of excavator lifting activities or appliance-specific planning considerations. As a result, Appointed Persons qualifying through these routes will have limited exposure to excavator lift planning and may not be provided with practical, appliance-specific planning tools.
This guidance and template pack has been developed to support a consistent baseline approach to the planning and documentation of excavator lifting operations and are intended to support excavator lifting operations where the Appointed Person and lifting team have appropriate knowledge[1] of the excavator, its lifting characteristics, and associated limitations.
Status and Use
This pack is not prescriptive and does not replace competence, professional judgement, or existing company procedures. It does not remove the requirement for appropriate training, experience, or escalation where the complexity or risk profile of a lifting operation demands it. The material is intended to provide a practical benchmark that organisations may adopt, adapt, and integrate within their own lifting management systems.
The pack comprises:
- A lift plan template, together with an accompanying guidance document containing embedded prompts and explanatory text to support completion;
- A supporting risk assessment template aligned to excavator lifting activities; and
- A completed example of a risk assessment demonstrating a ‘benchmark’ level of information and structure for a typical excavator lifting operation.
The completed example is provided for illustrative purposes only and should not be replicated without due consideration of the specific lifting operation, site conditions, and associated risks.
These documents are issued as foundation material and are intended to sit within, and not replace, existing organisational procedures for lift planning, review, approval, and control.
The purpose of issuing this material is to improve the quality and consistency of excavator lift planning documentation, support compliance with recognised good practice and regulatory expectations, and reinforce competence-led decision-making across the industry.
[1] Excavator lifting operations that are complex, unusual, higher-risk, or outside the experience of those involved may require additional controls, specialist competence, engineering input, or alternative planning approaches and are outside the scope of this pack.
Darren Biggs, Lead Appointed Person at Sir Robert McAlpine, introduces the Excavator Lifting documents
A Practical Guidance to Excavator Lift Planning
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Read more Excavator Lift Plan Template A Practical Guidance To Excavator Lift Planning External -
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Read more Excavator Lifting Operations Risk Assessment Template Guidance FinalExcavator Lifting Operations: Risk Assessment Guidance
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Read more Activity Risk Assessment Template Excavator Lifting Operations ExternalActivity Risk Assessment Template
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Read more Excavator Lift Plan Template ExternalExcavator Lift Plan Template
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A practical guide to scheduling lifts for tower cranes
Find out moreDarren Biggs, Lead Appointed Person at Sir Robert McAlpine, explains why we publish a suite of practical templates for lifting operations and introduces a revised version reflecting feedback from the industry.
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