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Tower crane inspection requirements in British Columbia

Short version: the law points at a standard, the standard points at the manufacturer, and the manufacturer's manual is where the actual numbers live. Here is how the three fit together, and what you have to be able to produce when somebody asks.

What the regulation says

Tower cranes in BC sit under Part 14 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation. Three sections do most of the work:

• 14.2(6) — a tower crane must meet CSA Z248, the Code for Tower Cranes.
• 14.13 — inspection and maintenance must be carried out by a qualified person.
• 14.14, with Part 4, — records of that inspection and maintenance must be kept.

The Regulation is public and free to read at BC Laws, and WorkSafeBC publishes guidelines for Part 14 alongside it.

Where CSA Z248 comes in

The Regulation does not tell you how often to grease a slewing ring. It tells you the crane must meet CSA Z248, and Z248 sets out the inspection regime — daily checks before use, weekly and monthly inspections, an annual inspection, an operational test, rope inspection, and a set of special inspections triggered by events rather than dates.

CSA Z248 is a purchased standard and its wording is licensed, so we do not reproduce it here. If you are responsible for a tower crane in BC you should own a copy — it is available from CSA directly.

What Z248 asks for, by how often

Counting the separate requirements rather than quoting them, this is the shape of the Z248 inspection regime as we run it across our own fleet:

CSA Z248-17 — 78 separate requirements

How often	Items
Every day it is used	13
Every week	10
Every month	8
Every six months	1
Every year	7
On erection, climbing or dismantling	39

And where the manufacturer comes in

Z248 says what to inspect and how often. It does not give you the brake shoe clearance, the torque figure or the wear limit — those are in the manual for that exact model, and they are not interchangeable between machines. The hoist brake shoe clearance on one of our saddle-jib machines is not the same figure as on our luffer.

Which is why a real maintenance programme is two schedules running side by side, not one. Our saddle-jib machine carries 100 separate requirements and our luffer 87, and they do not overlap — different intervals, different figures, different components. Neither can be run off the other's checklist.

Who is allowed to do it

A qualified person, which the Regulation defines by knowledge, training and experience rather than by ticket. In practice that means somebody who knows that model, has the manual, and can be shown to have done the work. Foundation inspection is different and stricter: the foundation assembly has to be inspected by a professional engineer, or by somebody the engineer designates, before the pour — and that inspection has to be documented in writing.

What you have to be able to produce

Records are not a formality here — they are the requirement. If a WorkSafeBC officer or a general contractor asks how a crane was maintained, the answer is a file, not a memory. In practice you want, per machine: the inspection and maintenance record, the annual inspection, the operational test, rope inspections, the foundation certificate, and the erection, climb and dismantle records.

Why this cannot be run off a whiteboard

Between the standard and the two manuals, our own fleet runs on 265 separate requirements — 78 from Z248 and 187 from the manufacturers. That is not a boast, it is the reason this is hard to keep in somebody's head, and the reason a crane that arrives with its records in order is worth more than one that does not.

Related guides

• What a real tower crane maintenance schedule contains — the four clocks a crane runs on, and how many items sit on each.
• Tower crane records you have to keep — what to hold per machine, and what a contractor asks for first.