June 23, 2017—OSHA’s proposal for a further one-year extension (to November 2018) of its crane operator certification requirement presented to the Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH) on Tuesday, June 20, was supported unanimously by ACCSH. OSHA is now expected to issue a proposed rule followed by a final rule sometime this summer which will formally extend the enforcement date for operator certification by one year to November 2018. This will allow OSHA to complete rulemaking on fixing the language in the current rule.
Meanwhile the operator certification requirement as written in the current rule is not in force. All indications are that the existing language will be substantially changed to remove the requirement for certification by crane capacity and to better define the role of certification in determining whether or not an operator meets OSHA’s definition of qualified.
The Federal Register notice can be found here. Read NCCCO’s submission to ACCSH here.
For additional history on OSHA’s Crane Rule, see NCCCO’s OSHA Crane Rule Resource Center.