What to Do the Day Before the Crane Arrives

Grab a Tape Tonight

These are the numbers that get asked for on every job, and having them written down on a scrap of paper by the door turns a twenty minute morning conversation into a two minute one. Write down the answer even when you are not certain, and mark the uncertain ones so nobody treats a guess as a fact.

Do the walk yourself rather than reading it off a plan. Plans are drawn before the landscaping went in, before the neighbor built a carport, and before somebody parked a boat trailer along the side of the house. The tape measure sees the property as it actually is this week.

• Weight of the item, operating weight with fluids in it, plus the model number you got it from
• Length, width and height of the item with everything still bolted on
• Distance from where a truck can sit to the exact spot the load lands
• Width and diagonal of every gate, side yard or opening it passes through
• Height of the wall, roof line or fence the load has to clear
• Anything crossing overhead between the truck and the landing spot

The Photo Set, and Where to Stand for Each One

Photos answer questions a phone call cannot. The mistake is sending one close-up of the item and nothing else. What is needed is the geography of the job, and that means standing in specific places and shooting outward.

Hold the phone horizontally and step back further than feels necessary. A tight shot crops out exactly the thing an operator is looking for, which is usually a wire, a wall corner or a slope. Send them all in a single message with the measurements typed underneath so nothing gets separated from its context.

• From the street, looking at the property, wide enough to show the whole frontage
• From where you think the truck will park, looking toward the landing spot
• From the landing spot, looking straight back at the truck position
• Straight up from the landing spot, showing wires, limbs and eaves
• The item itself, with its data plate or model sticker readable
• The driveway surface, including any cracking, settling or patched trench

People, Keys, Markings and Honest Unknowns

The rest of the list is about the site being genuinely ready when the truck rolls up, not nearly ready. A crane that has to wait for a gate key or a neighbor's car is a crane that is not working.

Utilities are worth a note of their own. If anything on your property was trenched, buried or backfilled where the truck will sit, say so, and get locates marked if the work is on a schedule that allows it. That includes irrigation lines, septic tanks, leach fields, pool plumbing and propane runs, none of which show on a public locate.

And if you do not know something on this list, that is a perfectly acceptable answer. Say you do not know. An operator can plan around a stated unknown. What cannot be planned around is a guess presented as a measurement.

• Move every vehicle off the driveway and the street frontage the night before
• Unlock gates, and hand over a key or a code for anything locked
• Take gate leaves off their hinges if they will not swing fully clear
• Have the owner, superintendent or an empowered decision maker on site or reachable
• Confirm the following trade knows when the crane finishes
• Keep kids and pets inside for the duration, and tell the neighbor whose car is closest
• Mark or describe any buried utility, tank or irrigation line near the setup area