The CCRA’s Technical Committee has been busy tackling several projects, including its work on the CSA Z150 Standard.
The work on CSA Z150 Standard (the safety code for mobile cranes) began last November, when the committee began reviewing where Canada sat in terms of adaptation of the CSA Z150 Standard from province to province.
The work on CSA Z150 Standard (the safety code for mobile cranes) began last November, when the committee began reviewing where Canada sat in terms of adaptation of the CSA Z150 Standard from province to province.
“Each province has their own regulations in terms of mobile cranes and they all cite different versions of CSA Z150, or they’ll take portions of CSAs at 150 and then add extra things,” explains Jason Brown, Technical Product Lead for Kova Engineering. “And so, I started doing research and putting together some tables and charts that showed where we were in a snapshot, provincially, and across Canada about which version of CSA Z150 they were referencing in their legislation.”
The Technical Committee presented its findings to the CCRA Board of Directors last December.
“They decided that based off that research, it was something they would like to look further into and try to find a way to make it more cohesive across Canada,” Brown says.
Kova Engineering, along with other members of the CCRA Technical Committee, has been working on putting together some guidelines for CCRA members on how to navigate the various uses of the CSA Z150 Standard when moving mobile cranes from one province to another. The ultimate long-term goal would be to have all the provinces use the same version of the Z150 Standard.
“Currently, there’s quite a bit of disparity across the country,” says Darin Richards, Vice-President of Regulatory Affairs. “We just learned last week that subject to interpretation, Ontario has recently upgraded to some pieces of CSA-Z150-16; whereas there’s still a current committee working on what’s going to be Z-150 2024 or 2025.”
The CCRA Technical Committee is currently awaiting final approval for a member to participate in the CSA Z150 Standard technical committee. The CCRA Technical Committee also recently confirmed that it has members sitting on the technical committee for the CSA Z248 Standard for tower cranes.
“When we start working with the CSA, we can start working at a level where we get a good understanding of what’s going on, we can speak with crane owners at the conferences about the things they’re concerned with, and we can take those concerns to the table and work on them with the rest of the committee,” Richards says.
The CCRA Technical Committee has drafted a letter it intends to send out to all the occupational health and safety regulatory authorities in each province to let the various ministries know that the Technical Committee is available to work with government to help guide the industry to success.
“We want to let them know that we’re here to provide support and collaborate if they have crane industry related concerns as they work through a regulatory process,” Richards says. “We also want to engage the engineering associations that are challenged to try and help their members understand the regulations as they relate to cranes.”
The CCRA Technical Committee is currently looking for another committee member from Ontario. Anyone interested in participating can contact CCRA Executive Director Claire Bélanger-Parker at claire@ccra-aclg.ca.
