Crane safety compliance is back under the spotlight in Australia after a mobile crane operator was convicted and fined $20,000 when his 200 tonne crane toppled and struck a second crane at a Melbourne construction site. WorkSafe Victoria found the crane’s load limiter override had been bypassed, allowing it to work beyond rated capacity for most of the day.

The detail that stands out is not one moment of bad luck but a pattern. Data from the crane showed it had been overloaded at multiple points earlier in the shift, with the safety system bridged so lifting could continue. A single check at any point that day could have caught it.

For construction and industrial operations running cranes, forklifts and other lifting plant, the real risk sits between scheduled inspections, in the daily decisions operators make under time pressure. Paper logs and verbal handovers rarely capture whether a safety override has been used, or how often.

FlexManager’s asset inspections and plant and equipment tools let site managers schedule and record daily and periodic checks, flag anomalies like repeated overload events, and keep an auditable history tied to each piece of plant. Permit to work and risk assessment modules add another layer of control before high risk lifts begin.

So ask honestly: would your business know if a safety override on a crane or forklift had been used today? If the answer is uncertain, book a demo and see how real time asset inspection closes that visibility gap.