A dropped spanner from thirty metres carries roughly the energy of a small car at walking pace. Offshore lifting has more paperwork around it than almost any other routine task, and the reason is that the failure mode is measured in fatalities rather than delays.
Why Lifting Sits in a Category of Its Own
Most offshore hazards are contained by the equipment that creates them. Lifting is different, because a suspended load places energy directly above people, and the failure is instantaneous. There is no alarm, no time to evacuate, and no partial failure that gives warning. That is why lifting operations attract a level of procedural control that can look disproportionate to anyone watching a routine container transfer, and why the industry keeps tightening it.
The regulatory ground has just moved. SOLAS Chapter II-1 now contains a dedicated regulation on lifting appliances and anchor handling winches, adopted through IMO Resolution MSC.532(107) and in force since 1 January 2026, covering design, construction, installation, testing, and maintenance. Its applicability is widely misread. The design, construction, and installation standards attach to equipment installed on or after 1 January 2026, but the requirements for operational testing, thorough examination, inspection, and maintenance reach the existing fleet as well, with equipment installed earlier to be tested and thoroughly examined no later than the first renewal survey falling on or after that date. An operator running older tonnage is inside this regulation, not outside it.
A suspended load puts energy directly above people with no warning stage. That single characteristic is why lifting carries more procedure than tasks that look far more dangerous.
Four Roles, Not One Job
The most common misunderstanding in lifting operations is treating the crane operator as the person responsible for the lift. They are not, and the division of roles is deliberate. Each exists because a single person cannot simultaneously plan, rig, watch the load, and drive the crane.
Lift supervisor: Owns the lift plan and the risk assessment, confirms the equipment and team are adequate, and has the authority to stop the operation. The accountable person for the lift as a whole.
Banksman or signaller: Directs the crane operator, controls the load path, and is the single point of communication. Where the operator cannot see the load, the banksman is effectively the operator’s eyes.
Slinger or rigger: Selects and attaches the lifting accessories, confirms the weight and centre of gravity, and ensures the load is secure before it leaves the deck.
Crane or appliance operator: Operates within the appliance’s rated capacity and follows the banksman’s direction, with independent authority to refuse an unsafe lift.
The authority to stop matters as much as the technical skill. Every one of these roles can halt a lift, and a culture where that authority is real rather than nominal is what prevents the marginal lift going ahead because a vessel is waiting. Where the roles collapse into fewer people, or where the supervisor is also the person under commercial pressure to finish, the control weakens exactly when it is needed.
What “Competent” Actually Means
Competence in lifting is a defined standard rather than a compliment. In practice a client will expect three things to be demonstrable for each person on the team: recognised training against a scheme the client accepts, documented practical assessment rather than attendance alone, and evidence of current experience in that role. All three, together, and current on the day.
This mirrors the pattern across offshore certification generally. A certificate from four years ago, held by someone who has since worked in a different discipline, does not establish present competence, and clients increasingly ask for the assessment record rather than the certificate alone. For anyone providing manpower supply into lifting-intensive scopes, maintaining that currency across a bench of people is the actual service, since a rigger whose ticket lapsed last month is not deployable regardless of ability.
Thorough examination of the equipment runs alongside personnel competence and is equally documented. Lifting appliances and accessories are examined at defined intervals by a competent person, with the reports retained, and an accessory that cannot be traced to a current examination should not be in service. Colour-coding schemes exist precisely so that an out-of-date sling is visible at a glance rather than discovered afterwards.
The Dropped Object Nobody Lifted
Here is the part that surprises people new to offshore. The majority of dropped-object incidents do not involve a crane at all. They involve items that were installed, stored, or fastened somewhere at height and later fell: light fittings, gratings, tools left on a beam, corroded fixings, unsecured scaffold components. The industry distinguishes these static dropped objects from dynamic ones released during a lift, and the static category dominates.
Most dropped objects were never being lifted. They were installed at height years earlier, and the fixing that held them finally let go.
That distinction changes what prevention looks like. Controlling lifting operations addresses the dynamic category well, but it does nothing about a corroded bracket on a derrick. Preventing static drops requires systematic inspection of everything mounted at height, secondary retention on items that could fall, tool tethering where people work above others, and dropped-object surveys that treat the structure itself as the hazard rather than the operation beneath it.
Where the Liability Lands
The commercial dimension has sharpened considerably. Lifting competence has moved from a safety expectation to a contractual one, written into scopes of work, audited before mobilisation, and reflected in insurance terms. A dropped-object incident now generates several parallel consequences: the injury or fatality itself, the regulatory investigation, the client audit, and the contractual exposure of whoever supplied the personnel or the equipment.
Getting the Team Right Before Mobilisation
The practical failure mode for contractors is arriving with a team that cannot demonstrate what the client’s scope requires. It happens because lifting roles are frequently filled by whoever is available and experienced, rather than by whoever holds the current certification the contract names, and because the four roles are treated as interchangeable when they are not.
Avoiding it is administrative. Read the scope for which lifting roles it requires and to which scheme. Match named individuals to those roles and verify certification, assessment, and currency for each. Confirm the equipment’s examination status separately, since personnel competence and equipment certification are independent requirements. And treat the dropped-object exposure as a structural question as well as an operational one, because the incident most likely to occur is not the lift going wrong but something falling that nobody was lifting.
Done that way, lifting becomes a controlled routine rather than a recurring exposure. Done by assumption, it remains what the incident statistics show: an operation where the procedure is well understood, widely documented, and still regularly bypassed under time pressure, with consequences that arrive without warning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is responsible for an offshore lift?
The lift supervisor owns the lift plan and the risk assessment and is accountable for the operation, but responsibility is deliberately distributed across four roles: supervisor, banksman or signaller, slinger or rigger, and crane operator. Each has defined duties and each holds independent authority to stop the lift. Treating the crane operator as solely responsible is a common and consequential misunderstanding.
What has changed in the SOLAS requirements for lifting appliances?
SOLAS Chapter II-1 now includes a dedicated regulation, adopted through IMO Resolution MSC.532(107) and in force since 1 January 2026, covering lifting appliances and anchor handling winches, supported by the IMO Guidelines for Lifting Appliances (MSC.1/Circ.1663) and for Anchor Handling Winches (MSC.1/Circ.1662). Design, construction and installation standards apply to equipment installed on or after that date, while the testing, thorough examination, inspection and maintenance requirements also reach existing equipment, which must be tested and thoroughly examined by the first renewal survey on or after 1 January 2026.
What counts as a competent person for lifting operations?
In practice, three things demonstrated together: recognised training under a scheme the client accepts, documented practical assessment rather than attendance alone, and evidence of current experience in that specific role. A lapsed certificate, or training in a different lifting role, does not establish competence for the role being performed, and clients increasingly ask to see the assessment record rather than only the certificate.
Are most dropped objects caused by lifting operations?
No, and this is the key insight for prevention. Static dropped objects, items that were installed, stored, or fastened at height and later fell, outnumber dynamic drops released during lifting. Preventing them requires systematic inspection of everything mounted at height, secondary retention, tool tethering, and dropped-object surveys of the structure, none of which is addressed by controlling lifting operations alone.
Sources: IMO SOLAS Chapter II-1, Regulation 3-13, Lifting appliances and anchor handling winches, adopted by Resolution MSC.532(107) and in force from 1 January 2026 · IMO MSC.1/Circ.1663, Guidelines for lifting appliances · IMO MSC.1/Circ.1662, Guidelines for anchor handling winches · International Labour Organization, Code of practice on safety and health in ports (lifting roles and competence) · DROPS (Dropped Objects Prevention Scheme) reliable securing guidance on static and dynamic dropped objects
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