A Telehandler Lifting Beyond Its Rated Limit

In 2017 we placed a Coyle Group safety officer on a wind energy construction project in Finland. While the team was placing and removing ballast from the main installation crane, he noticed that a telehandler was being used to do the lifting, and that the load looked heavier than the machine was rated for.

The telehandler was carrying 12.5 tonnes. The duty chart set a maximum working load limit of 12 tonnes. He brought the issue to the crane company and site management straight away. When the method was allowed to continue, the telehandler tipped forward as the load became dynamic, exactly the failure the rating exists to prevent.

Once we stopped the work and held a time-out for safety, the root cause was clear. There was a rigging crane on site that had originally been planned to carry out this task. The decision had been taken to use the telehandler instead, to speed the operation up, which meant disregarding the manufacturer's operating instructions.

The fact that the first warning had not been heeded pointed to a wider issue: a lack of safety culture that sat with both the site team and the contracted crane company. This was an organisational failing, not a one-off mistake, and it needed urgent attention.

Our consultant stopped the work and held a time-out for safety, the same disciplined accident investigation approach we bring to every site. With the team, he re-established the original plan of using the rigging crane for the lift, so the task went ahead within safe limits.

Just as important, the intervention reset how the team thought about the work. As the safety culture improved, the client issued a Safety Alert company-wide to emphasise the risk of using machinery in this way. By fully buying into carrying out the job safely, the project finished on time and without any further incident of this kind.