Additional risk controls for lifting precast concrete elements

A number of incidents associated with the lifting of precast concrete elements have occurred around Australia. These include failures of lifting clutches and sheave blocks and lifting clutches inadvertently disengaging from lifting inserts.

Dropping a precast concrete element from height can have serious to fatal consequences. For this reason, five risk control measures have been developed that are all to be implemented when lifting precast elements when an effective exclusion zone cannot be implemented.

It is anticipated that the five risk controls highlighted in this alert are adopted by industry with an expectation that they become standard industry practice to minimise the risk of the load dropping so far as is reasonably practicable. These risk controls will then inform amendments that will be made to the Tilt-up and pre-cast construction Code of Practice 2003 (PDF, 0.96 MB) as part of a broader update.