Maintaining your concrete pump plant

Is your concrete pump plant in good condition? Do you regularly inspect and carry out maintenance on your plant?

The updated Concrete pumping code of practice 2019 (PDF, 1.04 MB) made significant changes to the previous version and its publication was followed by a compliance audit campaign focusing solely on concrete pumping.

The number one issue identified during the campaign was maintenance of concrete pump plant, including:

• agitator paddles continue operating when the grate is lifted
• rusty equipment
• pressure gauges not operating correctly
• logbooks or other service documentation not available to review, and
• missing retaining clips.

Plant maintenance is very important to ensure the health and safety of all workers. Concrete pumps are dangerous pieces of machinery that have lots of moving parts subject to wear and tear.

The first step in maintaining your concrete pump plant is to establish a maintenance plan and preventative maintenance program. These plans will need to include regular inspections of the equipment in accordance with the manufacturer’s specifications. Inspections should be carried out:

• daily before commencement of work
• weekly
• monthly
• yearly, and
• six yearly (major inspection).

All these inspections are vital to ensure the machine operates safely. Daily inspection is especially important because it could capture an abnormality in the machine before any work has commenced and prevent an incident.

Be sure to record inspections in a logbook so users of the plant can be confident a check has been done.

More information

Check out the Concrete pumping code of practice 2019 (PDF, 1.04 MB) for more information.