When a mobile crane hire goes wrong in Uganda, it usually goes wrong before the crane turns a wheel. The machine arrives, and the ground where it has to stand is soft. Or the gate is narrower than the carrier. Or the load turns out to be heavier than the figure somebody remembered. Or it is all fine, except that nobody knows who is supposed to be directing the lift, so the operator will not lift.

All of it is avoidable, and all of it is decided by information that exists somewhere on your site already. This is what a crane supplier needs from you, what you should be asking of them, and what Ugandan law expects of the equipment and the people on both sides.

Start with the load, not with the crane

Clients often open with a crane size, such as 25 tonnes. Rated capacity applies at a short radius with the boom retracted, so that figure is often the wrong starting point. What the machine can lift at the distance you need can be a fraction of the figure on the side of the boom.

Six facts settle the crane selection.

Weight of the load. The weight from a nameplate, a delivery note or a drawing. Add the weight of everything that goes up with it: the lifting beam, slings, shackles, the hook block itself.

Dimensions and shape. Length, width, height and where the centre of gravity sits. A long, light item can be harder to handle than a short, heavy one.

Lifting points. Certified lugs and eyes, or the need for a sling arrangement around the item. If you do not know, say so: it changes the accessories and the crew.

Radius. The horizontal distance from the crane’s centre of rotation to the load at the point of pick and again at the point of set-down. This is the number that decides the machine, and it is the one most often left out of an enquiry.

Lift height. Height above the crane’s standing level, plus the headroom the hook block and any lifting beam take up above the load.

Where the crane can stand. Which brings us to the ground.

A photograph of the load, a photograph of the place it is coming from, and a photograph of the place it is going to will answer more questions than a paragraph of description. Send them.

Ground conditions and bearing pressure

A mobile crane on outriggers concentrates its whole weight, plus the load, onto four small pads. The pressure under a pad is far higher than anything the site has carried before, which is why ground that has taken loaded trucks all season can still fail under a crane.

The load arriving at each outrigger, taken from the manufacturer’s chart for that configuration, divided by the contact area of the pad, gives the ground bearing pressure. That has to stay inside what the ground can carry. Bearing capacity varies enormously by material: well-compacted gravel is in a different class from soft clay or, worst of all, unconsolidated fill. Where the pressure exceeds the capacity, spreader mats or crane pads are used to widen the contact area until it does not.

Three failure modes follow from getting that wrong. An outrigger can punch through soft ground and drop one corner of the machine. The ground can settle unevenly, taking the crane out of level, at which point its rated capacity no longer applies. Or it fails outright and the crane goes over. Munich Re’s loss-prevention guide on mobile crane overturning puts ground and set-up failures at the top of the list.

What to check and tell the supplier

• What the standing area is made of: concrete, compacted murram, hardcore, or fill.
• Whether it has been excavated, backfilled or disturbed, and how recently. Backfilled trenches and service runs are the classic trap, because the surface looks identical to everything around it.
• What is buried underneath: culverts, drains, septic tanks, cable ducts, a basement slab. A void under a pad does not announce itself.
• How it drains. In Uganda this is the seasonal question. Murram that carries a crane in February can be unusable after two days of rain in April. If your lift date sits in the rains, plan the standing area as though it will be wet, and expect matting.
• Whether the area is level, and how far out of level it is. Cranes need to be levelled before they lift.
• Slope, edges and excavations nearby. Setting up close to the crest of a slope or the edge of a trench reduces what the ground will carry, regardless of what it is made of.

Ground preparation is normally the client’s responsibility, not the crane company’s. Get that agreed in writing before the machine is booked, along with who supplies the matting if it is needed.

Getting the crane onto the site

A mobile crane is a large road vehicle before it is a lifting machine, and a good number of wasted days are spent at the gate rather than on the lift.

The route. Carriageway width, overhanging trees and cables, bridge and culvert capacity, and the turns. All-terrain cranes are long and the counterweight overhangs at the rear. A junction a semi-trailer manages can stop a crane.

Permits. Uganda’s road regulations set a permitted envelope for vehicle height, width and length. An indivisible load beyond it is a special load and needs a permit, applied for through the road infrastructure protection system and issued by the Ministry of Works and Transport. The Roads (Vehicle Dimensions, Vehicle Load Control and Enforcement Measures) Regulations, 2026 reset the figures, so ask your supplier which limits apply on the day. Larger cranes usually travel derigged on their own wheels, with counterweight on a separate truck. Once the crane, the counterweight trailer or the load exceeds a limit, the permit is mandatory and has lead time. Ask your supplier which part of the mobilisation needs one and who is applying.

The gate and the yard. Measure the gate, not the drawing of the gate. Check the swept path inside for stacked material, parked vehicles, scaffolding and site huts. Check the surface the crane crosses to reach its standing position as well as the position itself, because a machine can bog down thirty metres short of where it was going.

Somewhere to put the counterweight truck. Counterweight arrives separately on larger machines and has to be lifted off and back on. That needs space beside the crane, and it needs to be in the plan.

Timing. Some roads and some sites restrict when abnormal movements can run. If your lift depends on a road closure, a traffic diversion or a police escort, that is arranged well ahead, not on the morning.

Swing radius, overhead obstructions and the exclusion zone

Once the crane is standing, the hazard is everything it can reach.

Overhead power lines are the one to settle first. Contact with a live line kills people on the ground as readily as the operator. You need to know where the lines are, what voltage they are, and what clearance the operation will keep. Where the geometry is tight, ask UEDCL, the distribution network operator, to isolate the line, and allow time for it. Do not treat a line as dead because somebody says it is. Treat it as live until it has been isolated and proved.

The tail swing. The counterweight and superstructure of a mobile crane rotate as a single body, and the rear swings out beyond the carrier. The gap between the tail and a wall, a container, a scaffold or a parked vehicle is a crush point and people have been killed in it. That area is barriered.

The exclusion zone. The area under and around the load and the boom is barriered and kept clear of anyone not involved in the lift. Agree in advance how site traffic and other trades will route around the lift.

Everything else above. Structures, roofs, canopies, trees, lighting columns, another crane on the same site. If two cranes can touch each other’s working area, that is a separate plan.

What a lift plan contains

A lift plan records that somebody has thought the job through, and the operator works from it on the day. The international reference is BS 7121, the code of practice for the safe use of cranes. A plan that does the job covers:

1. A description of the operation and the load, with the weight, dimensions and centre of gravity.
2. The equipment selected, with the crane’s capacity verified against the manufacturer’s load chart for the exact configuration to be used: boom length, counterweight, outrigger extension and the radius at each point in the lift, not the machine’s headline rating.
3. The lifting accessories, slings, shackles, beams and spreaders, each with its safe working load and its current certificate.
4. Ground conditions and outrigger loadings, with the matting or crane pads required.
5. The sequence of operations, step by step from arrival and set-up through the lift to landing, de-rigging and departure.
6. The exclusion zone and the load path, and how people are kept out of both.
7. Roles and competence: who plans it, who supervises it, who operates, who slings, who signals, and what each of them is qualified to do.
8. Environmental limits, above all the wind speed at which work stops. Wind is measured at the height of the load, not at ground level, and the figure comes from the crane’s own documentation.
9. What happens if it goes wrong, including how a suspended load is made safe if the lift has to be abandoned part way through, and the emergency and access arrangements.

Whoever prepares it must be competent to do so. Under BS 7121 practice, that role is the appointed person.

Who provides the banksman?

This is the argument that happens on site at eight in the morning, and it is caused by two different contracts being confused with each other. The UK Construction Plant-hire Association model separates the two contracts.

Crane hire. The supplier provides the crane, in sound working order, with an operator. Everything else is yours. You appoint the appointed person, you produce the lift plan, you provide the slingers and the banksman, you supervise the lifting operation, and the liability for it sits with you. This is the cheaper line on a quotation, and it is the right choice when you have competent lifting people of your own and a lift you understand.

Contract lift. The supplier takes the whole operation: the crane, the operator, the appointed person, the site survey, the lift plan and risk assessment, the slingers and banksman, the supervision, and the insurance of the lift itself. You provide access, ground and the load. This costs more and it is the right choice when lifting is not your business.

The failure mode is booking crane hire and expecting a contract lift. It surfaces at the worst moment, because a competent operator will not lift without a plan and a banksman, and if neither has been provided the machine stands there earning money for nobody.

So before you sign anything, get four answers in writing: who is the appointed person, who writes the lift plan, who provides the slinger and banksman, and whose insurance covers the load while it is on the hook.

How we quote crane hire and where the responsibilities sit

What Ugandan law requires

Lifting equipment in a Ugandan workplace sits under Part XI of the Occupational Safety and Health Act 2006, which covers machinery, plant and equipment. The requirements are specific, and they apply to the equipment on your site whoever owns it.

Thorough examination, at least every fourteen months. A lifting appliance with a safe working load above 150 kg, or any lifting machine, may not be used unless it and every part of it has been thoroughly examined by an authorised person within a prescribed period determined by its construction and conditions of service. That period may not exceed fourteen months, and the particulars of the examination must be entered in the register (section 72(7)). Fourteen months is the ceiling, not the norm: harder service means a shorter interval.

“Authorised person” has a legal meaning. The Act defines it as a person authorised in writing by the Commissioner for Occupational Safety and Health to perform that function. An examination signed by somebody who does not hold that authorisation does not satisfy the section. It is a fair question to ask of any certificate you are handed.

Test and examination certificate. A lifting appliance or lifting machine must be tested and thoroughly examined by or on behalf of the manufacturer or by an authorised person, with a certificate specifying the safe working load kept available for inspection (section 72(1)). The same applies to lifting gear, meaning chains, slings, hooks, shackles, eyebolts and lifting beams, used for loads over 50 kg (section 71(2)).

Marking. Every lifting appliance and lifting machine must be plainly marked with its safe working load and a distinctive identifying number. For a jib crane whose safe working load varies with the jib, an accurate indicator showing radius and the corresponding safe working load must be fitted where the driver can see it (section 72(5)). No machine may be loaded beyond its safe working load.

Competent operators, and a minimum age. A lifting machine must be operated by a person trained and competent to operate that machine, unless directly supervised by a qualified person for training (section 72(13)). Nobody under eighteen may operate a power-driven lifting machine or give signals to its operator (section 72(14)). That second clause catches the banksman as well as the operator.

A register kept at the workplace. Section 75 requires a register in the form of Schedule 6, with a separate page for each item of lifting gear, appliance or machine, recording its description, identifying number, when it was first taken into use, the date and number of its test and examination certificate and who issued it, and the date of each examination, the authorised person who carried it out, any defect found and what was done about it.

Chains and most lifting gear other than rope and rope slings also have to be annealed at least once every fourteen months unless exempted (section 71(3)), and an inspector may test any lifting gear at any time and prohibit its further use.

Read together, these sections make the certificates and the register a legal condition for using the machine at your workplace. An inspector will ask you for them as well as the supplier.

Records to ask your supplier for

Ask before the machine mobilises, not after it arrives. A supplier who keeps these as routine can send them the same day.

What we inspect and what we keep on record

What causes a wasted mobilisation

• The weight was an estimate. The item is heavier than the enquiry said, and the crane that was sent cannot take it at that radius.
• The radius was never given. Capacity was checked against the machine’s rating, not the distance it has to reach.
• The ground was not ready. Soft, waterlogged, backfilled, sloping, or simply not cleared, and no matting on site.
• The crane could not get in. Gate, turning circle, overhead cable, a parked truck nobody moved, or a route decided from a map.
• A permit was missing. An over-dimension movement without a special load permit gets stopped on the road.
• Nobody was appointed. No lift plan, no banksman, no appointed person, because the hire was booked as crane hire and understood as a contract lift.
• The load was not free to move. Still bolted down, still connected, still full, or buried under something else.
• Weather. Wind above the limit in the crane’s documentation, or rain that put the standing area out of use. Not preventable, but the fallback date is.

A site visit or a proper conversation a week before settles most of these.

The short version

Send your crane supplier this, and most of the risk goes away before anyone mobilises.

• Load weight, from a nameplate or drawing, plus rigging weight
• Dimensions, centre of gravity and the lifting points
• Radius at pick and at set-down, and the lift height
• What the crane is standing on, whether it has been dug up, and how it drains
• Photographs of the load, the standing position and the set-down position
• Gate widths, route and anything overhead, power lines first
• The date, the working window and what happens if it rains
• Which you are buying: crane hire or a contract lift
• Who is the appointed person, and who provides the slinger and banksman

Further reading

• Occupational Safety and Health Act 2006, Uganda. Part XI covers lifting gear, appliances and machines.
• Special load permits. Dimension limits, how to apply, and who issues the permit.
• BS 7121-3, Code of practice for the safe use of cranes: mobile cranes. Lift planning, ground loadings and the appointed person.
• Mobile cranes overturning on construction sites: a guide to loss prevention, Munich Re. What causes the losses.

Planning a lift?

Send us the load, the radius and a photograph of where the crane has to stand. We will tell you what machine it needs, what the ground has to do, and whether you want crane hire or a contract lift.

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