Business & Equipment Owners

Inspection & Compliance for Business-Owned Lifting Equipment

Australian businesses own an enormous variety of lifting and height-access plant, and every category comes with its own compliance obligations. A warehouse might run overhead and gantry cranes, jib cranes and hoists over its production lines. A workshop or steel fabricator might own a franna crane or pick-and-carry crane alongside a bank of forklifts. Transport yards and mobile tradies operate vehicle-loading cranes and HIAB units bolted to their trucks. Facility managers, councils and builders keep elevated work platforms (EWPs) — scissor lifts, boom lifts and cherry pickers — on site, while almost every business that lifts anything relies on forklifts, telehandlers and a store of lifting slings, chains and rigging gear. All of it falls under AS1418, AS2550 and the model WHS framework administered by SafeWork Australia and the state regulators.

Cranes Australia manages the whole lot under one accountable relationship. Rather than chasing separate vendors for your cranes, your EWPs, your forklifts and your rigging gear, you get a single team that knows your asset register, tracks every due date, and turns up when your equipment is due for routine, periodic or major inspection. Our engineers and technicians work across Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, Geelong, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Canberra and Darwin, plus regional and remote sites, so wherever your business operates we can reach your plant.

Routine, Periodic & 10-Year Major Inspections

AS2550 sets out a structured hierarchy of inspections across the life of a crane or EWP. Routine inspections keep day-to-day defects in check, periodic inspections (typically annual) involve a thorough examination by a competent person, and the 10-year major inspection is the intensive event that strips equipment back to verify its structural and mechanical integrity once it reaches its design working period. For business owners, the 10-year major inspection on an overhead crane, hoist or elevated work platform is often the single largest compliance milestone — and skipping it can render the plant illegal to operate. Our teams perform non-destructive testing (NDT) — magnetic particle inspection, ultrasonic testing and dye penetrant — on load-bearing welds, hooks and structures, and reconcile findings against AS1418 design requirements.

Load Testing, Proof Load & NATA-Endorsed Reporting

After a repair, a modification, a new installation or a registration, your equipment often needs load testing before it can safely go back into service. We deploy calibrated test weights and water-weight bags to confirm rated capacity, overload protection and limit-switch function on overhead cranes, gantry cranes, jib cranes, vehicle-loading cranes, hoists and lifting beams, with NATA-endorsed testing where required. Proof load testing is also central to certifying lifting slings, chains, shackles and rigging gear. Every result is captured in a report your auditors, insurers and clients will accept without question.

Registered & Chartered Engineering Sign-Off

When your equipment falls outside the standard case — an out-of-scope repair, a proposed derating, a structural modification, or a machine that has reached the end of its design working period — you need a registered or chartered engineer to sign off. Cranes Australia provides that engineering authority nationally, protecting business owners from operating plant whose paperwork will not survive a SafeWork audit or an insurance investigation. It is the difference between compliant, insurable equipment and a hidden liability sitting in your workshop.