Sectors

Construction Lifting Equipment & Crane Solutions

Engineered lifting systems, statutory inspection and site maintenance for contractors across the UK and Ireland. Constructionline Gold, SSIP and LEEA registered. Established 1897.

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Lifting Equipment for Construction Sites and Yards

Construction lifting is two different problems that get procured as one. On site, the lift is temporary, the layout changes weekly, the equipment lives outdoors and the load is rarely the same twice. In the compound, precast yard, plant workshop or modular factory behind it, lifting is repetitive, fixed and running to a production rate. The same statutory duties apply to both. Almost nothing else about them is the same.

WH Scott handles the fixed and semi-permanent side: overhead travelling cranes, gantries, jib cranes, mobile A-frames and bespoke lifting beams — surveyed, designed, fabricated, installed, load tested and certified.

WHS Scott’s innovative CoreLift Pro offers a flexible solution for lifting into basement levels

We then keep them compliant through LOLER thorough examination and planned maintenance, from depots across the UK and Ireland. Certification is held in a client portal rather than a filing cabinet — the group system manages over 400,000 inspections a year, construction among the largest sectors on it.

Key Lifting and Safety Challenges on Construction Sites

Five things account for most of the lifting problems we are called into on construction projects. None of them are solved by buying a bigger crane.

Loads that are not what the sling set expects. Precast panels, structural steel, façade units and plant sit off their centre of gravity. That calls for a designed lifting beam or frame with calculated geometry, a proof load test and a marked SWL — not a heavier chain.
Weather, and the grit that comes with it. Outdoor duty means wind loading on the crane and the load, driving rain into motors and dust into rails. Galvanised or high-spec finishes, IP-rated hoists, storm anchors and end-stop condition all become part of the specification.
Buildings that were never designed to carry a crane. Existing structures, temporary compounds and light portal frames usually cannot take a runway load. That is a structural survey question first and a crane question second — and often the answer is a free-standing runway on its own columns and foundations.
Restricted access and shared workspace. Lifting near live services, other trades or an occupied building leaves no room for a badly positioned operator. Radio remote control and variable-speed hoisting keep people out of the load path and stop loads swinging into structures.
Compliance drift across the fleet. Accessories fall due at six months, cranes at twelve, hire-in equipment arrives with unknown history and the certificates end up spread across three sites. Missing paperwork stops work as effectively as a broken hoist, and it is the first thing an HSE inspector asks for. Our inspection and certification service exists to close that gap.

How We Support Construction Contractors

Three things, and they are usually bought together because splitting them across suppliers is where the compliance gaps appear.

Design, fabrication and installation. Site and structural survey, duty-class specification, supporting steelwork fabricated by Hiltonne Engineering under BS EN 1090, lift plan and RAMS, installation, load test, certification and handover documentation. Where the scope makes it appropriate we take the Principal Contractor duty under CDM 2015 rather than leaving it with you.
Statutory inspection and certification. LOLER thorough examination and PUWER inspection of cranes, hoists, gantries and accessories, written schemes of examination where the default intervals do not fit, and load testing. Reports land in the client portal with asset history and renewal dates, so a framework audit is a login rather than a search.
Maintenance, repair and lifecycle. Planned preventative maintenance, breakdown attendance, overhaul and crane modernisation, and decommissioning when the project ends. Height safety systems where working at height sits alongside the lift, and Metlab weld and NDT inspection where supporting steelwork needs verifying independently.

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Tell Us About Your Project

Whether you need a single piece of equipment or a fully engineered lifting system, our specialists can help. Tell us your load, environment and compliance requirements — we’ll do the rest.

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LOLER, PUWER, CDM and BS 7121: What Applies on a Construction Site

Construction lifting is governed by two sets of duties that are easy to conflate: the regulations that say the equipment must be safe — LOLER 1998 and PUWER — and the standards that say how it must be built and used. Both get audited.

Regulation or standard	What is covers	What it means on site
LOLER 1998	Thorough examination, SWL marking, planning and supervision of lifting operations	Six months for lifting accessories and anything used to lift people; twelve months for other lifting equipment; or the intervals set by a written scheme of examination drawn up by a competent person. Equipment assembled on site needs examination before first use.
PUWER 1998	Suitability, maintenance and safe use of work equipment	Covers the crane as machinery — controls, isolation, guarding, operator training and pre-use checks. A crane can be LOLER-certified and still fail PUWER.
CDM 2015	Client, principal designer and principal contractor duties	Installing a crane is construction work. Someone has to hold the Principal Contractor duty — we have held it on a live Ministry of Defence site.
BS 7121	Safe use of cranes: lift planning and the Appointed Person	Every lift needs a plan proportionate to its risk, signed off by a competent Appointed Person.
BS EN 15011	Design of overhead travelling and gantry cranes	Sets the duty classification. Specify to actual cycles per hour, not peak load, or the crane wears out early
BS EN 13155	Non-fixed load lifting attachments — beams, frames, clamps, magnets	A bespoke lifting beam needs design calculation, proof load test and marking. Fabricating one without that trail is not compliant.
BS EN 1090	Execution of steel structures	Runways and supporting steelwork must be fabricated to an execution class by a certified fabricator. WH Scott holds BS EN 1090.