All provinces and territories · Editable Word template

Mobile crane and rigging safety manual template

A complete written health and safety program for companies that supply mobile cranes with operators, and rigging crews, to construction, industrial, energy, mining and utility customers in every province and territory. It is laid out on the 14 national COR elements and written for the work: crane selection and load charts, ground conditions and outrigger support, lift planning and critical lifts, rigging and below-the-hook devices, signalling, overhead power lines, the lift area, lifting personnel, assembly and disassembly, crane inspections, and travelling with a crane. Section 15 sets out the law of every province and territory, and federal workplaces, side by side, with each jurisdiction’s crane rules, operator certification and power line distances. It arrives as an editable Word file you make your own.

A look inside

Sample pages from the manual, marked and cut short. Your copy has no watermark.

Cover with room for your logo and company name

Linked table of contents, laid out on the 14 national COR elements plus a section on working across Canada

Section 3: eighteen safe work practices written for crane and rigging crews, ground and outrigger support shown

Section 15: each jurisdiction's crane rules, operator certification and power line distances

Appendix A: all 74 documentation questions of the national COR elements mapped

Print-ready permits and forms: the lift plan and critical lift permit shown

What’s in the manual

1. Safety and health policy

A signed, dated policy, the written program, and responsibilities for management, lift supervisors, lift planners, operators, oilers and apprentices, riggers and signal persons, and how we work under the customer’s rules and the prime contractor while keeping charge of the crane and the lift.

2. Hazard assessment, analysis and control

Formal hazard assessments by type of crane and lift, the 5 × 5 risk matrix, a critical task inventory, and the crane site and set-up hazard assessment done on every job.

3. Safe work practices

Eighteen practices for crane and rigging crews: capacity and load charts, ground and outriggers, lift planning, rigging, signalling, power lines, the lift area, lifting personnel, assembly, inspections, heights, customer site hazards, fuelling and spills, wind and weather, oversize moves, fatigue and tools.

4. Safe job procedures

Step-by-step procedures for assessing a set-up, setting outriggers on mats or cribbing, a critical lift, rigging and test lifting, working near power lines, assembling a boom or counterweight, lifting personnel and setting up after an oversize move.

5. Company safety rules

Life-saving rules for crane crews (never bypass a limiter, never under a suspended load), the operator’s right to stop a lift, and a progressive discipline process applied the same way every time.

6. Personal protective equipment

Hard hats, high-visibility clothing, gloves for rigging, fall protection on cranes and loads, and what each customer site adds.

7. Preventative maintenance program

Cranes, limiters and load moment indicators, wire rope, rigging and below-the-hook devices, personnel platforms, mats and cribbing, and the trucks that move them.

8. Training and communication

Operator certification where the work is, qualified riggers, signal persons and lift supervisors, familiarization on each crane model, power line awareness, and pre-lift meetings and handovers.

9. Inspections

Daily, frequent, periodic and yearly crane inspections, rigging, personnel platforms, lift audits and taking a crane out of service.

10. Investigations and reporting

Dropped loads, overturns, boom failures and power line contacts reported to the regulator where it happened, to the customer and to the power company, and investigations.

11. Emergency preparedness

Power line contact, tip-over, dropped loads, rescue from height and from a personnel platform, fire on a crane, weather, and breakdowns and collisions on the road.

12. Statistics, records and document control

Crane log books, yearly certificates and NDT reports, lift plans, rigging and personnel lifting records, utility clearances and oversize permits, kept for the longest period any jurisdiction requires.

13. Legislation

OHS law where the crane works, the federal laws that touch crane moves, the CSA and ASME standards the manual follows, and the operator’s right to refuse.

14. Procurement and contractor management

Cross-hired cranes, trucking and pilot vehicles, engineers and NDT, what the customer must tell us, and buying cranes, rigging, platforms and mats.

15. Working across Canada

Whose law applies, then every province and territory and federal workplaces side by side: the act and regulation, the regulator, each jurisdiction’s crane rules, operator certification, inspections, critical lifts and power line distances, serious incidents to report and how fast, and the other rules that change at the border.

Appendix A. COR cross-reference

Every one of the 74 documentation questions in the 14 national COR elements, what it looks for in plain words, the section that answers it, and whether the auditor will also want your records.

Appendix B. Forms

37 print-ready forms that match the manual, each with a form code: among them the crane site and set-up hazard assessment, lift plan and critical lift permit, crane daily inspection, rigging inspection record and personnel lifting permit.

Written for the work, not just the province

A crane crew’s risks come from the set-up and the lift: ground nobody prepared for it, a radius a few metres longer than planned, a gust on a big sail area, a sling over a sharp edge, a boom drifting toward a line. This manual is written around them, practice by practice and procedure by procedure.

You work under the customer’s rules and the prime contractor, but the crane and the lift are yours. The manual says how they fit together, and the stricter rule always wins.

One program for every province you work in

Your crews follow the occupational health and safety law of the province or territory where the crane works, not where your office is. The manual sets your company’s rules once and gathers what changes at each border into section 15, so a supervisor starting work in a new province looks up what applies there.

It is laid out on the 14 national COR elements, so it suits a COR audit wherever you certify. Each certifying partner uses its own audit tool, so check it against yours; our provincial manuals follow each province’s audit exactly. No template can guarantee a certificate on its own, and we don’t claim to.

Who it is for

Mobile crane rental and rigging companies, boom truck and knuckle boom operators, and contractors who run their own cranes, working for construction, industrial, energy, mining, utility and wind customers.

A template is a starting point, not legal or engineering advice: a qualified person must adapt it to your cranes and your customers’ rules before you issue it.

Lifetime updates

When the law changes, we publish a new edition and email everyone who bought the template. Every update is free, for as long as we publish it.

Version 1.0 October 16, 2026
- First edition, written for mobile crane and rigging crews and laid out on the 14 national elements of the harmonized COR audit.
- Section 15 sets out the law, crane rules and operator certification of every province and territory and federal workplaces, checked against the legislation in force on 15 October 2026.