Watch out when swapping a luffing jib for a hammerhead

I compared running a luffing jib at 30 meters versus switching to a hammerhead setup on a tight site in Chicago last Tuesday. The hammerhead gave me way better clearance for the steel beams we were setting, but it added 15 minutes to each pick cycle. Has anyone else hit this tradeoff on a congested job site?

3 comments

3 Comments

morganl7118d ago

And that's the thing people don't stop to think about either, how much time you lose just getting the crew back up to speed on the new signals. Even if you run through it all in the morning huddle, by the time you're three picks in somebody's already reverting to muscle memory from the last setup.

brooke44818d ago

Muscle memory is no joke on these sites. I've seen guys lock into old patterns like their lives depend on it, even with the new signals written on a board five feet away. Drives me nuts when the foreman thinks a five minute huddle fixes weeks of habit. That beam incident you mentioned, I had a close call last season with a guy who did the crane signal for "boom up" instead of "drum rotation." Real easy to forget when your hands just do what they've always done.

troyc1718d ago

Dude nobody ever talks about how the ground crew has to totally re learn their hand signals for each setup. I watched a guy almost send a 4 ton beam the wrong way because he mixed up the luffing jib and hammerhead signals.