Heard a foreman say crane hand signals are outdated and I almost walked off

This guy at the union hall was talking about how we should just use radios for everything now. Has anyone else dealt with a site that tried to ditch hand signals completely?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia84326d ago

Radios break, batteries die, and you can't exactly yell over a 50 ton crane when the hydraulics are screaming. Hand signals work every single time because they're right there in your line of sight. Ever been on a site where the radio crackles out at the worst second? Pretty sure that's how loads go sideways. Plus, hand signals don't pick up interference from nearby towers or someone else's channel. The foreman probably never had to flag a critical lift through a dead radio. Not saying radios don't help, but ditching hand signals is asking for trouble on a busy site.

jesse8426d ago

That radio would somehow end up picking up Metallica right when I needed to swing a beam.