Department name: ED - Energy division

Target audience: All personnel involved in the operation, maintenance, and inspection of offshore cranes.

Issue: Two incidents have occurred offshore, involving the failure of crane boom hoist ropes, resulting in the crane booms falling onto the deck below.

Duty holders are advised to ensure that:

During 2020, two separate incidents occurred on offshore installations as a result of the failure of a crane boom hoist rope. In both incidents the boom hoist rope came off a sheave; this was undetected and the consequential severe damage to the ropes ultimately resulted in their catastrophic failure.

Although no person was injured in either incident, the falling crane booms (together with the loads being lifted at the time), resulted in structural damage to the crane booms. Both incidents had the potential to cause death or serious injury to the persons involved in the lifting operations and to other persons on the Installations.

On one crane the rope came off a sheave in the 'A' frame and then dropped down onto an adjacent sheave bearing housing. This caused considerable wear and damage to the bearing housing.

On the other crane, the rope climbed out of a sheave in the boom tip and dropped down into the gap between this sheave and boom tip side plate. This also resulted in the rope being forced up against a structural member in the boom tip structure. The rope then cut a groove almost fully through this structural member.

Consequently, both boom hoist ropes suffered such serious damage that they eventually failed whilst the cranes were undertaking lifting operations.

In the case of both incidents, the said ropes may have come off a sheave due to one of the following reasons:

To prevent an incident of this nature, relevant offshore installation duty holders and contractors involved in the operation, maintenance and inspection of offshore cranes, must where appropriate and so far as is reasonably practicable, ensure that:

Health and Safety Executive Redgrave Court Merton Road Bootle Merseyside L20 7HS

HSE aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health.