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Retaining a Lifting/Rigging Specialist Consulting Engineer

This page is offered to provide guidance to rigging contractors, general contractors, and facility owners seeking to retain a consulting engineer who specializes in lifting, rigging, and oversize/overweight transportation.

The most important point to remember is that this specialized work is not a part of the standard university curriculum in civil or mechanical engineering. Therefore, experience is everything. And experience in this work is not gained by sitting in an office making drawings with AutoCAD, 3D Lift Plan, or whatever. A true understanding of lifting, rigging, and specialized transportation comes from working in the employ of a contractor in such a manner that the individual is exposed to both the details of planning and engineering work (in the office) and the actual performance of a project (on the job site).

An excellent concept of what it takes to develop a true expertise in lifting and rigging can be found on Kent Goodman's web site Maximum Reach.com. Kent is a lifting specialist engineer who worked for Fluor Constructors for many years. One of his efforts after retiring from Fluor was compiling a list of lifting / rigging specialist engineers worldwide. His requirements for inclusion on the list are quite simple and straightforward. The individual must be a graduate engineer and have received two or more years of structured rigging training in a contractor's rigging office. These requirements recognize the need for an engineering education to provide the background required to handle the increasingly technical demands of rigging engineering and the practical contractor experience necessary to understand how this work is actually performed.

So with this in mind, how does one go about finding a suitably qualified lifting / rigging / transportation specialist consulting engineer? The Membership Directory of the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association is a good start. Searching online with appropriate keywords is another obvious path. However, after finding a consulting firm that offers services in this industry, a few questions must be asked before signing on the dotted line.

You must determine and evaluate the capabilities of the actual engineer(s) who will be working on your project.

• In the case of a sole practitioner, as I was for many years, who will be working for you is obvious.
• In the case of an office with many engineers, simply ask for the names of the engineers who will be working for you.
• Once the individuals who will be working on your project have been identified, ask for resumes. Check out the assigned engineers, looking for the combination of education, office experience, field experience, and professional licensure that is necessary to competently provide the engineering services that you require.
• Last, write a contract with the consulting firm that clearly states that only those engineers that you have identified and accepted will perform work on your project. You may get some pushback on this, but don't back down. People shouldn't be offering their services as subject matter expert consulting engineers if they don't already have the necessary talent.

I can offer one more piece of advice from my past experience. In the early to mid-1980s, I worked for a large offshore contractor in Houston. For a little over a year of that time, I worked in the company's Technical Quality Assurance department. This group was charged with performing detailed reviews of the company's engineering work (sometimes called independent reviews or technical audits) before it was sent to the client or to the field. When I started in this department, I asked my new boss how "picky" I should be in my reviews. His response has stuck with me all of these years. He told me that an engineer's work must be correct enough, complete enough, and clear enough to stand up in a court of law, if necessary. This concept also can be applied to every decision we make. If a serious accident occurs, all involved will be called upon to justify every decision they made on the project. That will include your selection of a consulting engineer. Choose wisely.

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As of October 1, 2019, 2DM Associates, Inc. is no longer providing professional engineering services.