Crane Site Assessment Before the Lift

Driving the site before the day of the lift

A crane that cannot get to the work is just a large truck taking up the roadway. Access kills more jobs than capacity does, and it kills them at the worst possible moment, which is with a delivery already on site and a customer who took the day off. Looking first is the cure and it takes under an hour.

What gets measured is unglamorous. Gate width at the narrowest point, including the post and the hardware, not the nominal opening. The pinch between the house and the block wall along the side yard. Driveway width where a truck has to turn into it. Whether a long wheelbase truck will drag at the apron where the driveway meets the roadway.

Turnaround room gets its own attention out in the county areas. A truck that goes a quarter mile down a dirt lane has to come back out, and backing a long boom truck that distance with no place to swing is not a plan, it is a problem waiting at the end of the day. Where the truck turns gets identified going in.

Overhead, underfoot and where the delivery goes

Everything above the work gets looked at from the ground. Distribution lines along the right of way, the service drop running to the house, communication lines slung under them, and roof overhangs or a patio cover in the swing path. In older parts of town the drop to the house often crosses exactly the airspace you wanted for the boom.

The planned outrigger positions get examined too. Fresh backfill along a foundation, a trench line running to a meter, a septic lid, an irrigation vault, a covered pool. Any of those under a float changes the setup plan, and finding them with a probe beats finding them with the machine.

Then the staging question. Where does the delivery truck stop, can it get to that spot, and can the crane reach the load where it lands. A perfectly planned pick fails if the flatbed cannot make the corner into the neighborhood. That question gets asked at the same time as everything else, not the morning of.

What gets asked out loud

Half of a site assessment is questions rather than measurements, and they are all the same shape: will the thing that has to be ready actually be ready. Is the landing point built. Is the pad poured and cured. Is the curb open and the old unit already out. Is the anchor pattern drilled and the right dimension.

The other half is about people. Who is going to be standing there to receive the load and guide it down. Are they available at the hour the pick is scheduled. Does the mechanical contractor need the crane to hold the unit while connections are made, because that changes how long the truck is tied up.

Administrative details get sorted in the same pass. HOA gates with a code or a guard, a lakefront road where a lane has to be coned, parking along a narrow curb line, and whether the neighbors need a heads up that a truck will be blocking access for part of the morning.

Measurements go in a file, not in memory

Everything from the visit gets written down and photographed. Dimensions with a tape in frame, shots of the approach, the gate, the driveway apron, the landing point and anything overhead. Notes about the ground and about who said what would be ready.

That file is what the plan is built from later, which matters because a site visit and a lift can be weeks apart. Memory reshapes a gate from thirty six inches to about a yard, and then to plenty wide. A photo with a tape in it does not drift. When something on site has changed since the visit, the file makes it obvious immediately.