WorkSafeBC reports strong uptake of new tower crane rule

One year after British Columbia introduced a new requirement for employers to file a Notice of Project – Tower Crane (NOP‑TC), WorkSafeBC says compliance is generally strong and the rule is helping it intervene earlier on high‑risk work, even as serious crane hazards persist on increasingly complex sites.

The NOP‑Tower Crane regulation took effect on October 1, 2024, as part of amendments to Part 14 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation. It requires employers responsible for tower crane activities to submit a notice to WorkSafeBC at least two weeks before any assembly, climbing, repositioning, or dismantling begins.

The notice must confirm who will be responsible for the crane activity, the nature and scope of the work, site‑specific safe‑work procedures, the qualifications of the designated supervisor, and identification information for the crane. WorkSafeBC says the information is allowing its crane inspection team to better understand where, when, and how tower crane operations are taking place, and to target inspections accordingly.

In the first year of the regulation, employers submitted more than 900 NOP‑Tower Crane notices. Andrew Kidd, a director in prevention field services at WorkSafeBC, said the volume and content of those notices are helping the regulator get ahead of risks. “It’s really allowed our crane team to proactively talk to these employers and to proactively go down and inspect so that we can identify any issues before anything… has a chance to happen,” he said.

Specialized officers review each NOP‑TC against the regulatory requirements. “An officer will go over that, make sure that all the pieces are filled in correctly,” Kidd explained. “If they have any concerns or if they’re missing parts, they’ll pick up the phone, they’ll talk to the employer and we’ll make sure that the NOP‑TC is where it needs to be before the work starts.” When submissions are incomplete or reveal gaps in planning or risk controls, prevention officers follow up with employers before work starts, and inspections are conducted as appropriate.

New rule tied to broader crane safety strategy

The NOP‑Tower Crane rule was introduced as one element of a wider crane safety strategy developed after several serious crane‑related incidents in early 2024, including a fatal incident at the Oakridge Park construction site in Vancouver. WorkSafeBC undertook a comprehensive review of crane operations and convened about 150 stakeholders from across the sector, including labour representatives, operators, employers, prime contractors, rental companies, and the BC Association for Crane Safety.

That review concluded crane risks in B.C. are rising as more cranes are deployed and as more work occurs on large, multi‑employer projects.

As part of the strategy, WorkSafeBC has committed to refining crane and rigging regulations, strengthening operator certification, enhancing inspection requirements, expanding inspection capacity and technical expertise, and supporting BC Crane Safety’s certification, training, and employer support programs.

Enforcement activity ramps up

Inspection and enforcement data is a key input to that strategy. WorkSafeBC’s crane inspection team conducted more than 1,500 inspections across B.C. in 2024, issuing over 800 orders, including 75 stop‑use orders and 36 stop‑work orders related to crane operations.

Kidd said the specialized crane team has significantly increased its level of engagement with worksites. “We’ve conducted about 1,300 inspections, [and] 370 of those approximately have contained orders,” he noted, adding that there has been “an increase in our use of our enforcement tools for stop use and for stop work and we’ve issued an increasing number of warning letters and penalties.”

“When we do write orders, they’re corrective orders and we’re sticking around to make sure compliance happens before they move forward,” he said. “That would be why we would need at times to apply stop use and stop works.”

Kidd cautioned that it is still early to draw firm conclusions about incident trends, but he noted that WorkSafeBC has not seen a repeat of catastrophic failures such as the Kelowna collapse or the Oakridge incident since the NOP‑TC requirement came into effect.

Persistent risks on taller, more complex projects

Despite what WorkSafeBC describes as “good compliance” with the new rule, the agency is emphasizing that core risk factors around tower cranes remain. Kidd pointed to taller buildings, increasingly complex lifts, and a changing workforce as areas of concern.

“As buildings get higher, [there’s] increasing complexity,” he said. “The ratios of operator qualifications to trainee operators… [are] increasing, lots of new workers coming into that. So those risks remain. We still have the risks of rigging and associated regulations around rigging, supervision, those types of things.”

He said the NOP‑TC is an important part of managing those risks because it forces planning and verification before cranes go up. The process, he argued, “makes sure that employers are getting the right people involved, the right qualifications, the lift directors, the safe work procedures, making sure that they identify the crane, the age of the crane… Making sure that that happens before they start work is really critical to the strategy here.”

Implications for health and safety leaders

For health and safety leaders in construction and other sectors using tower cranes, Kidd’s message is that the fundamentals of risk management remain central, even under new regulatory requirements.

“Those core parts… making sure that work is planned, making sure work is well supervised, it’s organized, the culture of the workplace is such that people can speak up when they see health and safety issues, that goes well beyond tower cranes,” he said while urging safety leaders to apply a structured approach across their organizations

WorkSafeBC says it will continue to use data from NOP‑TC submissions and inspections to identify emerging issues and inform future regulatory and guidance updates. For now, the regulator’s message is that the new tower crane rule is functioning largely as intended, but that sustained planning, supervision, and worker engagement will be critical to keeping pace with the risks on B.C.’s crane‑intensive worksites.