💡🚧 The Construction Industry Needs to Move Beyond Tick-Box Training

Kevin Bennison, the founder of InspHigher and a respected voice in the lifting industry joins us to talk about what’s gone wrong with construction training and how to fix it. 

As he draws on his experience from the military to the crane cab, Kevin shares with our host Jimmy Webb from UK Construction Blog on how competence, repetition, and leadership can transform the industry from a “tick-box” culture into one built on real skill and accountability.

🔹 Why current training standards fall short
🔹 The difference between qualification and competence
🔹 How to lead yourself and others in lifting operations
🔹 Practical advice for companies and professionals looking to raise standards

It’s a candid look at how the industry can do better, and what it takes to get there. Follow Kevin’s journey and the work of InspHigher through the links below:
https://www.insphigher.co.uk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbennison
https://www.youtube.com/@InspHigher
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Special shoutout to our dynamic host Jimmy Webb of Construction Cogs: https://constructioncogs.com
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Transcript

From ground-breaking projects to game-changing innovations, the UK Construction Podcast brings you face-to-face with the industry's brightest minds and boldest thinkers. Each episode features candid conversations with construction leaders, architects, engineers, and on-site experts who share their hard-won insights and behind-the-scenes perspectives. We cut through the noise to deliver actionable intelligence on market trends, emerging technologies and the forces shaping British building.

Jimmy: Hello, welcome. I'm here with Kevin Bennison, who founded Inspire, where he does consultancy and training for the lifting industry. I've had the pleasure of chatting with Kevin before on my own podcast, where we rabbited on about a whole many things, probably unrelated to construction. I think we almost got to figuring out the meaning of life, but I'm not too sure about that. Kev, thanks very much for giving me your time again. How we doing, we good?

Kevin: My pleasure, Jim. Yeah, doing well mate. Plenty going on and just trying to keep active and fresh.

Jimmy: Good stuff. Well, we're going to talk about what you do for a living, Kev, but first, let's briefly touch on how you got there. You've had quite the journey. I think you left school at 16 to become an apprentice joiner. You had a really good career in the military and then you went on to become a mobile crane operator, an appointed person, and now you founded Inspire. So what made you move? What was the transition from moving from the military into the lifting industry? How did that come about?

Kevin: Mainly to start a family. I could see it just wasn't going to work too well. My ex-wife wasn't massively keen on the army, so that caused a bit of friction as well. To be fair, she'd given up a lot by moving away from Dundee, which is where she grew up and near to where I grew up. She gave up her job and her flat and came away from her friends and her family when we got married. I could see that wasn't going to work in the long term. For me, there was the choice within myself: is it going to be trying to make this work and start the family or is it going to be the army? Maybe it wasn't that binary, but that's how I saw it. I decided to leave the army to start a family and focus on that.

Because I'd been on earthmoving plant in the army, I went on to earthmoving plant for a few months when I first left, but I didn't particularly enjoy it in civvy street—just being on like a JCB and running that around all over the place. There wasn't the same camaraderie like we used to just laugh at each other's mistakes and stuff.

I knew a few people on the cranes and I gave one of the guys a call. He'd already offered to help me out when I first left. This was a few months on and I called him up. His name's Jim as well. I said, "Jim, do you know if that job's still open? That opportunity to come and get trained up as a crane operator?" He inquired about that and it was. So I got started with Hewden Crane Hire in October 2000.

Jimmy: Well, so you've had quite a long career in it then. You ventured on to becoming an AP, an appointed person. For those who don't know what that is, what is an appointed person?

Kevin: Essentially, without getting too much into regulations, one of the legal requirements is every lifting operation is properly planned by a competent person. It's up to the employer to evaluate who is the person who will be competent to plan that particular lifting operation and then you tend to be appointed to plan that lifting operation or a range of lifting operations. The term comes from the appointed person, who is the person that's appointed to plan that particular lifting operation rather than such a thing as an appointed person. Of course, there's a qualification for it, which helps improve your skills towards planning lifting operations. But ultimately, it's considering who is the best person to be appointed to plan that particular lifting operation.

Jimmy: Sounds good. So you became one of the leading APs of the industry. When we spoke recently, you spoke about your work on changing standards or setting standards in the industry. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Kevin: Sure. Well, when I first got into training in 2010, one of the things that I really wanted to do was contribute to improving competence in the industry. I wasn't sure I could do that, but I certainly felt that some people were just ticking over. I assumed for quite a long time that people knew the same stuff as I did and we all thought the same way. Of course, there's plenty of people who know far more—they're technically better—but there was a lot of people that struggled with some of the basics as well for various reasons. I got to the point after doing some inductions and such like for other operators that I seemed to be okay at passing on information. So then I decided to get into training in 2010.

It's always been there to try to improve standards. Just by keeping at it and expanding the network, now I contribute to some of the working groups where CITB are looking at the standards for the different courses. There's a lot of different opinions that come into that. Sometimes you just have to accept that my opinion isn't necessarily shared with others. So maybe you're not going to get all the things that I think are ideal.

I'm helping to improve standards, but I also feel there's big gaps. I feel that the appointed person course in particular—let's put the other roles to one side for the moment—there's not much out there that's helping people actually prepare for doing that course. It's then a very intense course where people are just rammed full of information. The reality is some people will say that the AP course is the hardest course you can do in the construction industry. I'm not sure about that because I've not done loads and loads. NEBOSH is pretty challenging and I'm sure there are a few others as well. But many people have said that. It's not because of the level of content, because it's not all that difficult. The mathematics aren't all that difficult. The problem is you're getting it all rammed in within such a short space of time.

When there isn't much help to prepare for that, then you're getting rammed full of this information. There's only so much you're going to take from that. It does fall short of the information that's required if you want to plan complex lifting operations. Then there's not much else for qualified appointed persons beyond that. That's where my interest really lies—helping to change things so that we get a much more supported and well-rounded appointed person. That preparation, the learning process, and then things that are following on from that to help continue to develop that knowledge.

Jimmy: So what can they do about that then specifically? First of all, you say it's a fairly short course. How long is the course?

Kevin: The course is five days, including test at the moment.

Jimmy: Yeah, that is short, isn't it? That's a tower crane course is about five days as well.

Kevin: Well, again, that's another subject. I don't know about tower crane. I'm pretty confident that tower crane courses used to be 10 days going back in the day. Mobile crane courses certainly were. This is a worrying thing as well, Jim, because I've noticed, like even just the other day, there was a post come up from a training provider. Mobile crane courses, five days. There isn't—okay, maybe you could say there's a bit less to learn in some cases because some of the systems on the cranes are a bit more automated these days. However, you're still physically having to push those levers to control the crane effectively. There's lots, as you know, that you need to understand around that as well.

The worrying trend for me is there's actually been less emphasis getting put on quality training over the past few years. That's been reducing, I would say, over the past couple of decades. Rather than improving, I could certainly go into a couple of analogies from military days that demonstrates that it's not about just telling people something once and that works out. It's not like that. I think we really need to start reversing this trend of the training being more of a tick box exercise, which unfortunately people on the ground lose respect for it as well and just feel "training is all about money." Training is not all about money if it's done well, if it's effective. Training is about making people better at what they do. I think it's really important to start turning that around as well.

Jimmy: Yeah, so are you getting backing from CITB and such like about that?

Kevin: Well, CITB can only do so much. CITB are very busy and essentially they just set the standards. They're also in some ways a bit like committee leaders. That's certainly how often it is when we have the working groups. They'll let us know what the framework needs to be. But they'll say, "Look, you're the industry experts, it's really up to you." Bear in mind that some battles may be difficult to win. So you got to be a little bit careful.

If we said like the appointed person course, there's no question for me that you could easily make that a 10 day course. Now, if we look at the NVQ for the AP qualification, it's a level five. I'm not totally familiar with the education framework, but they tend to say that I think a level five is equivalent to an HND. So it's getting on to pushing on to degree level by getting this level of qualification. But the learning part of it is done in five days. Typically, with something like that, the learning phase would be done probably over a period of months rather than five days.

Of course, if we went AP courses five days, we're going to change it to 10, which would be perfectly reasonable, by the way, then all of a sudden there'd be uproar because it's a huge shift and people typically aren't comfortable with massive change. So we need to just go bit by bit. That old Chinese proverb—every thousand mile journey starts with a single step—it's just important to keep taking the steps, the small steps towards the better destination.

Jimmy: Well, the couple of APs that I've spoken to said most of their learning is done once they're actually on site, they're qualified and on site. I suppose it's like most things, isn't it? But you can't—I suppose that's okay. You've got people to mentor you and you've got people to hold your hand along the way because it's not really the sort of industry where you can make mistakes, is it? And learn from those. Although everyone does make mistakes, but—

Kevin: Yes. Yeah. It's a tricky one, that. I think it's very difficult to quantify the amount of learning, Jim. It would be easy to say, "Oh, most of the learning is done on site." Maybe the things where you're connecting it to practical application, so it's real and it's tangible. You can see it. However, let's take it in your life—when do you learn most in your life?

Jimmy: In the first two to four years, I suppose.

Kevin: Yeah. How much of that do you remember?

Jimmy: Hardly any of it.

Kevin: Right. So you learn most in your first few years of life, but would we say that? Possibly not, unless we're told that by experts, which is the case. Now we're having a son who's like 21 months old—second time around. But I'm watching him a lot more. I'm watching him develop. I'm trying to understand or I'm curious about what's going on in his mind. What are his processes for going and doing the next thing and running off? I don't understand what his processes are, but he's learning from every action that he takes.

If we take that to the AP or crane operator or driving a car or whatever it may be—I think because the stuff that you learn sometimes on those courses or when you're learning to drive from a driving instructor, many people say, "Oh, you learn most when you get out on the road yourself." But it seems so basic. You're ingraining the autopilots. You're changing the autopilots a lot of the time. So maybe you don't give it the credit that it deserves.

Just taking that to the military situation again, I talk about this a lot in the training. I'll often say to people on a course, "Who's dealt with firearms before?" You'll get maybe a couple of people on the course who have dealt with firearms in some way—whether it's clay pigeon shooting or they've been involved in the military or in the police or whatever it is. But I'll say, "Okay, so for everybody then, what do you think you would do if you came across—what would be the most important action to take if you came across an unattended firearm? If you see a rifle or a shotgun or something lying down on the ground?"

Many people who have not had experience in firearms will often be able to say, "Well, check that it's safe." What does safe mean? Well, safe means that it's unloaded. There's no round in the chamber and it hasn't got a magazine or its method of feeding the rounds to the weapon because then it's just a bit of metal. If it hasn't got any rounds, it's just a bit of metal. That's all it is. So you make it safe.

I've been out of the army 25 years, but I could still, if you asked me to talk you through normal safety precautions on an SA80, I could do it. Why? I don't know if it's written down anywhere. So it wasn't about writing it down. It was about doing it enough times to then—I don't even think about that anymore. That's training. There are other examples of that in the military as well. If you get told something once and then you have to come back to it nine, 10 months later, you're unlikely to be able to do it because you haven't done it enough. So this is getting back to we need to focus on the repetition of things.

Sometimes maybe people won't give—people are eager to get on with stuff. When you think about starting anything, you probably think about the point where you want to be a couple of years down the line. "I want to start driving." You probably, when you're a kid, you're thinking, "Yeah, I want to be in the car with my mates blasting out music, doing wheel spins from junctions and all that sort of stuff." You can't get there until you do the basics, but people maybe just don't give credit to the basics as much as what's deserved because there is so much learning goes on if it's done well.

Jimmy: Yes. I'll tell you that last point—I think nowadays we're in a culture where everyone wants everything now. Everyone wants the shortcut, the short way, and that's not the right way to do it, especially in this industry.

Kevin: Definitely.

Jimmy: Okay, what about—so let's talk a little bit about Inspire. You do consultancy. What does your consultancy involve? What do companies need consultancy for?

Kevin: I don't do a lot of what you would typically call consultancy actually, it's there as an option. However, I tend to help companies with training that's actually going to be most useful for them. Unfortunately, again, with training, sometimes in-house training gets a bad rap because there's people not doing it well. It's just, "Yeah, wave a couple of hand signals and pay me this and you got a ticket." Rather than looking at an accredited system for training.

The thing about accredited training is, in many cases, you have to do it that way. That way isn't always necessarily the most helpful or useful thing for every organisation and every application. What I often tend to do is look with organisations to see what would be useful for them. When a company approaches me and says, "We'd like to get some training," usually I'll ask them a couple of questions. Things like, what's led to this? Often there's an incident. Or there's something that's concerning to them. They're really worried about this. And I'll say, "What is it you want your people to be able to do following this training?"

So that can be quite revealing. Then some of the stuff that you might go, "Oh, well, an accredited course, an accredited AP course or whatever," you can just discard that, discard that, discard that, because that's not any use to them. They don't need it. What that does do then is go, "Okay, we're going to add this and add this and add this." So it's like tailoring a recipe for the tastes of the particular consumer.

Jimmy: Right. So do you do the accredited courses though?

Kevin: Occasionally, not much now, Jim, because when I first started on my own in 2014—I'd run an accredited training centre for Emerson Crane Hire down in East London. I'd developed that over the course of four years from 2010 to 2014 and left and went on my own in 2014. I think there was a few people in the training game that were expecting me to start up myself.

I've never had any interest in that, to be honest, Jim. There's enough accredited training organisations. I'm not saying I'll never do it—I'd never thought about it—but it was just like, "Nah, there would need to be a compelling reason for me to do it. Because there's plenty of those." So the only capacity I've really done accredited training is when I'm doing it on a freelance basis for other training companies. Like the other day, this week, I was out doing some spider crane training like CPCS A66 for a training company and actually testing one of their instructors so they can then train and test it as well. Occasionally I still do a CPCS AP course and other training as well, but not often though.

Jimmy: Okay, okay. So when you founded Inspire, you put a tagline in: "The place for leaders in lifting operations." What does it mean to be a leader in lifting operations? What's your understanding of what a leader is?

Kevin: Well, for me, a leader is a person who can lead themselves, basically. Not necessarily a leader of other people. Someone who's in charge of their own actions, emotions, intentions, etc.

Jimmy: Fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Leadership starts within, doesn't it?

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of people drifting along and they're just doing what they need to do and going along with the flow and whatever comes up. Then they often wonder why they're not happy because they're just going with the flow of the river rather than choosing which river to flow in. That's a big thing. If you're doing just what you need to do, then you're working out of necessity. Some people are even resentful about working out of necessity. "Oh man, I have to go and do this course just to get on that site." Okay, so that's not a choice. But if you're going, "Look, I want to work on these sites and I want to increase my opportunities. Therefore, I'm going to choose to go and do this course," whatever it is, or "I'm going to choose to do this thing." That's leadership. That is leadership. Starting with yourself.

Once you are reasonable—I was about to say totally comfortable leading yourself, but I don't think you need to be totally comfortable with leading yourself to effectively lead others. You just need to be on that path and know how that looks. There's lots of times where I'm not a great leader for myself, and I'm sure at times I'm not a great leader for other people as well, but I do enough of leading myself to be effective most of the time and then understanding what leadership looks like for others too.

The main thing about the leaders in lifting operations—really what it's all about, Jim—is when you're going beyond just what you need to do because you're choosing your path. That's pretty much what it is.

Jimmy: So how can we all adopt that leadership mindset?

Kevin: By adopting it. That's about the size of it. And that's easier said than done. We spoke about this before and I'll just be really brief on it. I was already starting to choose my path, but I was going with the flow a lot going back years ago. But I had a bit of ambition. I had designs on various things.

There was a point where when I saw some of the older operators and some of them were happy—if you've been on cranes for 40, 50 years and you enjoy coming to work each day, I hugely admire you. I hugely admire people who can do something similar for a long period of time and still find joy in it. I admire that massively. I'm not that person, unfortunately. In many ways, I need to keep moving because I get bored.

But I looked at the people who'd been on the cranes for some time and they were moaning about the jobs, they were trying to avoid the jobs that were going on. They were clearly not happy. And I just thought, "I don't want to be one of those. I am not going to be one of those. I'm going to choose my path." If it means that in 10, 15 years time, I'm not sat in a crane, then so be it. At the time I was loving it. I loved being on the cranes. But I was preparing myself for the possibility that that wouldn't always be the case as well.

Then that resulted in getting into training. Then it resulted in going on my own and it also resulted in a business not working out and it resulted in a business partnership not working out and it resulted in me being one step away from being homeless. I had to go and live with a mate and pay him rent. He says, "Look, just take the room. Don't need to pay anything for a while." I mean, I was broke. I was out of work. Couldn't pay my rentAt that point, Jim, that was a real turning point. I think I was in a point where a lot of people are afraid to face that. No money. A lot of my hard working identity—I had to allow that to be stripped away and go, "Right, I'm not going back."

It was an option to go back and work ridiculous hours a week or sit with it and choose my own path. That was the most defining moment in me choosing my own path. Unfortunately, there's likely to be hardships in it. But it's better to accept that and anticipate that and choose your own way and you minimise the hardships, perhaps. Because what is harder than getting up every day to go and do something you hate?

Jimmy: Yeah, that's deep.

Kevin: It's about just making a choice. For that, you've got to think about how would I like it to look? It's not necessarily going to be that way, but at least, again, the thousand mile journey, just start with a simple step. And if you're choosing that step, you're on that path.

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Jimmy: Yes, I like that. That's good. Again, it's getting out of that instant gratification culture, isn't it? Got to be in it for the long haul.

Kevin: Yeah, I like it.

Jimmy: Okay, so for construction companies listening to this, what should they be looking for when bringing in lifting professionals and what red flags indicate someone might not be as competent as they claim?

Kevin: So are we talking about a company that does their own lifting operations or are we talking about a company that does contract lifts?

Jimmy: Both, really. If they're doing their own, then maybe they could bring an AP or someone in to do that sort of stuff. So yeah, both.

Kevin: It's difficult, really, Jim, to really pinpoint that because it really depends on the capacity. But I think, again, if you look at anybody that does things really well—I mean, I don't know if you're into the MMA or whatever. I watched the boxing last night, but I didn't watch UFC. I've not watched the highlights of the Chimaev-Du Plessis fight. However, Chimaev was apparently just all over him, just wrestling him the whole five rounds and dominated him. There was a lot of strikes, but I think a lot of strikes were on the ground. That's because he'd done the basics well.

Again, if you look at in boxing, the really good ones do the basics well. When it comes to boxing, if you look at—there was the Beterbiev fight. I can't believe the name is escaping me because I think he's fantastic. But anyway, the guy who was his opponent, he'd done the basics really well. The point there is that the experts, when you knuckle it down, there might be fancy things that they can do brilliantly that other people can't do, but at the core of it it's doing the basics really well.

What you want to look out for, I think, when it comes to lifting professionals is how well do they do the basics. The basics are just like in the way that they perhaps sling loads, in the way that they ensure that cranes are set up effectively and ready to work, in the way that the communication is done. Now, I would say if you are bringing lifting professionals into your organisation, then it's going to be helpful to have lifting professionals that help you with that process.

Unfortunately, this is not taken away from how good some people are, because there's some people that are great that they can't tell you all the stuff. However, the real basics in terms of calculating sling length, in terms of calculating sling rating, in what hitch to use on a load—the best way is just observe people. And if they're not doing the basics really well, then that's something you want to be checking out. That's the red flag—because how you do anything is how you do everything to a degree.

If you do the basics well, the rest of the stuff moving on from there will get done well too. Also, if another good one I think is when you have somebody doing something in a particular way, ask them a question. Ask them what led you to using that method. If they cannot give you at least some explanation, then it's a concern. "Well, it's just how I've seen it done." Then you've got somebody that's in the flow of the river rather than choosing the river to flow in.

I would say just by asking good quality questions, which are typically based on what led you to choosing that method, something like that, and also watching how people do the basics.

Jimmy: Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. So what are some common mistakes you see in lifting operations and how can they be prevented through better training and awareness?

Kevin: A lot of common mistakes, I would say, are around slinging. Perhaps just not selecting the best method that could be used at the time. Just stuff like, even when you've got scaffold tubes and people just single wrapping scaffold tubes, which most days it's not going to give you any problem. You might have been doing that for years. "I've never bothered double wrapping them. That's all right." Until one end catches on something and now you have the whole lot coming out the sky.

It was interesting when I was doing site audits, tower crane audits and lifting operation site audits for a principal contractor going back some years ago. I used to just do a couple of audits in a day for about three, four days a month. I'd just go and do some audits for them. I'd usually do two sites in one day, like three hour audit.

Went to one site, pack of plasterboard, and the guy has slung the plasterboard with a choke hitch. Okay, cool. I said to him, "What do you think is the best method for slinging a pack of plasterboard with a choke hitch? Would you ever do it in any other way?" "Nah, never." So then I turn up at another site, same company. Pack of plasterboard in an angled basket. "What do you think is the best way to sling a pack of plasterboard?" "Angled basket. Would you choose other ways to do it?" "Nah, this is best for it."

So why is it that you've got two different sites? Okay, two different people. And this is why you've got to be very careful with saying what is the right way. Because out of those, what is the right way to do it? Interestingly, some people listening to this might go, "Well, the right way is this." Fair enough. But both lifted the load successfully. A better question is, what is the best way to do it? That often leads to a different answer. It maybe takes a little bit more of analysis and evaluation rather than just going with what somebody else done or whatever.

It's looking at, again, asking yourself in the situation. I think it's a game changer—asking yourself, "What's the best thing I can do in this situation?" rather than, "Oh, I'll just do it as the lift plan says or somebody else says or they've always done it or they've told me to do it that way." What's the best thing I can do in this situation? That will help with a lot of the mistakes that are made. It might be that the best thing to do in that situation is ask somebody else because you don't have enough information within yourself to really understand how to do it effectively. You're not totally confident on it.

Just asking yourself, "What's the best thing to do in that situation?" and looking at the consequences. Set of scaffold tubes, if it's not slung securely and it catches on something, consequences are you've got scaffold tubes raining out the sky. Sometimes it might be, "I'll do it in a more secure way. What's worse? Load potentially getting damaged slightly causing indentation or the load coming out the air?" I would go for slight damage every time. There's bound to be a better way that prevents that, but then that will maybe take further analysis. Do you get what I'm saying? The best would be like slight potential chance of indentation on the load is better than the load coming off.

Jimmy: Yeah, I think part of the problem these days, and I've seen this myself, is when someone is trying to do it properly and then they've got their lifting supervisor or lifting manager in the background screaming at them, "No, don't fucking do it like that. Do it like this. Get it up. Come on. Do it like this." I think that's where, again, leadership comes into play, where you've got to say, "No, hang on a minute. I'm doing it like this." But it does happen, unfortunately.

Kevin: Of course. Of course it does. Yeah. There's lots in that as well, Jim, because I've heard this kind of analogy used—when you get two people in discussion between human beings, especially when the ego comes into play. Lots of people put a negative view on the ego. The ego can be very helpful to us. It is very helpful to us. But when it runs the show, it's problematic. That's the issue. When the ego begins to run the show and people let it take over, then it's problematic.

Often when you get two people in conversation, it can be about who's got the strongest frame. Who frames onto the other the best? There can be a variety of factors in that. It could be positions of authority, titles. It could just be the bigger person, the more assertive person, the angriest person, whatever it is. We've got to be very careful of that, that we're not going along with something that's not the best thing to do simply to satisfy our insecurities or perhaps who seems to be the most powerful in the situation.

If that's happening frequently, what we'd suggest to somebody, and they feel powerless to do anything about it, the most powerful thing they can do is pick up the phone and arrange to go and work for somebody else.

Jimmy: Yes, yes. Difficult at the moment, though. Construction's taking a bit of a hit at the minute, isn't it? Indeed. So it's difficult to find work.

Let's get on to technology. Is there any emerging technology or practices that you're excited about lately?

Kevin: Yeah, I like the Gantrude system. That's pretty cool. It's got an auto-level function on there. It's basically a chain running through a mechanical system up the top, comes off the hook. You may have seen it, Jim. You can level up or manipulate the load in the air. So there's almost a top and tail function there—like if you're putting in a set of concrete precast stairs then you can have a certain angle as you come down, you can change that angle without anybody having to touch the load or go near it. You do it by remote control. So that's pretty good. I do like that.

Jimmy: Yeah, that's a good one actually. Because the amount of time you have to put things down, could you just shortening the chains or whatever, lifting it up again.

Kevin: It's an expensive system, but I think as with anything, whenever technology first comes in, it's always really pricey, isn't it? Like the iPhone was massive costs initially. But the price—certainly if you're on a contract, it's affordable to most people now. I think there'll be about a time on that where yes, it's mega pricey, but as the technology is replicated, then it'll be able to get done a little bit more cost effectively and it'll become a bit more affordable to more.

Jimmy: And hopefully it'll pay for itself anyway at some point.

Kevin: Yeah.

Jimmy: So we'll answer the last question now. You've probably answered this partly, but what advice would you give to someone starting out in the lifting industry?

Kevin: Be very clear on what you want to get out of it. That's a key thing. When people—I get some people coming up and as you will do as well, Jim—saying, "Oh, I want to become a crane operator." You've been a tower crane operator and I was a mobile crane operator. There's very different attributes or character attributes, I would say, that lend themselves to those people.

I'll say to people, "Do you enjoy stability? Do you enjoy routine? Do you enjoy familiarity or do you prefer a bit of variety? Does it matter too much if your working patterns are erratic or do you need to have a better understanding of when you're going to start and finish?" Straight away you can see where I'm getting that. If people like, "Yeah, I like routine and I like to know where I am," tower crane. 

That's a big—because if you get in the wrong one of those, if you get your variety-driven person and they go on towers, they're probably going to become a liability. Because they're going to get fed up. They're going to be easily distracted, potentially by doing the same thing over and over whereas mobiles and you like somebody that likes routine and familiarity they're going to be oh flipping heck I wish I knew where it was going each day I don't know what time we're going to get finished tomorrow this is doing my head and you know that that sort of stuff so yeah what you want to get out of it is is an important thing um is it you want better money well both can do that how do you want your life to look like with it.

Kevin: That's maybe a bit broad, Jim, but it's a really important question for people getting into the lifting game. What is it that you want to get out of it? Yeah, that is a good one. Funny enough, actually, that's a good one. Hold on, let me just see. I'll answer this question today, actually, in one of my YouTube videos. Let's see if I can get the comments up on my phone there. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. So, hey, mate, I've been driving MK140 for the last eight years. I was assuming that it's a mobile crane. Yeah, it's a Lebar mobile tower crane. Yeah. Would you recommend me moving to standard tower crane? I said, depends what you want out of it.

You get to see more of the country doing your role, but being away from home might be crap. So moving from location to location versus being on the same job for a couple of years, doing a variety of interesting lists versus the same repetitive lists each day, a short climb to your cab versus a potentially long climb, less early finishes of potential flyers, blah, blah, blah. So pretty much mirror just what you're saying there. So would that be the same for anything in the industry, slinging, are you paying anything? 

Kevin: Well, I mean, if you look at the typical routes in, Jim, to the lifting industry, of course, there's some coming in AP now, but that's usually by circumstances rather than by choice. If somebody says, yeah, I want to be a lifting operations planner, I go, all right, well, start on the ground, you know, and have that view in mind. That's what you want. That's what you want out of it. I want to become a lift and operations planner. 

Get your time in on the ground and have that goal in mind, you know, and you'll get to enjoy the process because you'll enjoy practically getting to learn what you need along the way. You know, if somebody says, oh, I want to be a lift and operations supervisor.

Right, start on the ground. So typically your two routes in are either operating or slinging and signalling. Yeah? Sure. So again, same thing. If you're a slinger for a tower crane..same thing each day, isn't it? Pretty much. Yeah, there's a variety, but it's limited. You know where you're going, unless you're working for agency where you get chopped around a bit. So that brings another sort of hybrid option to it. But working with tower cranes or working with mobiles. And there's a variety of that. There's crawlers, which is a bit similar to tower cranes, really, but somewhere in between. So, yeah, I would say it's always a helpful question to ask people, what is it that you want to get out of it and then go from there. 

Jimmy: Yes, good answer. Good point. So before we finish up, is there anything else you'd like to talk about or bring up?

Kevin: There's always plenty to talk about for sure I think that um I'm very much on the path now Jim. I think maybe said this before you know I'm 48 now which isn't particularly old it's not young either. I think you're what are you a few years behind me 45 yeah 45 yeah yeah so you're getting to that point where it's like i've got ages left. If we use it well, you know, it's like got probably two decades of working career left, quite possibly. That's a long time, but that's a really short time if you just don't use it effectively. It's going to disappear. And I don't want those two decades to go and I'm like, what are they doing that time? So, yeah.

What I'm trying to do, and I'm kind of aware that the clock is now ticking, is change how training is done. And I've slowly been trying to build a bit of influence on that, with the likes of, you know, being involved with the Lead AP group and on some of these working groups and building a following and, you know, just building network and such like and listening, hearing what people are saying. But there are changes that I would like to make and that the foundation training is far more effective than. 

We remove the amount of documentation that's involved because let's not forget the national debt in this country is utterly horrendous and it keeps getting worse. If we keep doing the same things, we're going to get the same results. 

Jimmy: As we know, Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. So if we keep doing the same stuff, we're going to get the same results, right? Things are going to get worse.

Kevin: So I would like to see and bring in more of a military way of training or just with that idea in mind that when you go on site and let's say you've got a few telehandler operators, right? And you could ask any one of them telehandler operators. Okay, so before you do a lift, what are the key things that you're considering? Ideally, if they've all been well trained, they'll give you in maybe different wording, pretty much the same sort of answers. 

Check the ground along the route, check the load to see if it's going to be stable on the fork, see if it's in capacity of the equipment, see where I've got to reach to and if the telehandler does it, see whether I need stabilisers or if I'm doing it on wheels, see whether somebody's going to need to bank me because it goes out of view, right? You want it to be that they're just able to come out with those things. You don't need to put it on paper, right? Because they know it.

So we don't need to waste time. We're going, oh, yeah, well, we better, like, come up with a plan and then get that approved by these people and these people and slow the whole process down. Why? Because we train our people really well and they know how to do the basics.

So that would be one fundamental shift. I would also like people, especially when coming to AP, that the knowledge that they're empowered with, they do feel more empowered to do the job more effectively without that thing where you're like, hold on, now I'm out there doing this and I don't know what to do next, you know, and I don't know where to turn for information. So, there's things that I'm looking at, working on, just taking slowly step by step. 

But that's what I want to achieve by the time I wrap up. That training, people are excited about training because it empowers them and it gets us doing things better and more efficiently. And we go, well, why would we waste time doing the paperwork when we can just spend that energy and time on making sure we do things more effectively? Because construction is about doing, not writing.

Jimmy: Sure is. That's right. And not everyone's academic for the writing as well. People predominantly construction personnel are more practical, aren't they? More hands-on. They're more doers. 

Kevin: Yeah. Well, I've seen a lot of this stuff that you're doing on LinkedIn, actually. I've been doing stuff in Radius Group on sling angles and stuff like that and tagline and stuff like that. 

Jimmy: So people can see that on your LinkedIn, see your progress of what you're up to. Where else can people find you? 

Kevin: On the Inspire YouTube channel. Of course the first part of the normal word inspire then higher h-i-g-h-e-r so inspire um and there's a youtube channel with that name there's some tutorials on there there's some information videos which some of them are really good for putting on and basing a toolbox talk on it as well and I do some work with the lead ap group as well the industry lifting lead ap group. 

So there's illapig, I-L-L-A-P-G dot com. That's not mine, but I'm involved in that. There's lots of good information there. But yeah, my particular work, LinkedIn and YouTube, best places to go. Say that again, so illapig, what? I-L-L-A-P-G, which is yeah, Industry Lifting Lead Appointed Person Group. 

Jimmy: Okay, write that down. Well, that's us then, Kevin. Thank you very much for your time. It was really, really good talking to you again. Loads of useful information there, and a lot that hopefully people can learn from in the industry. So, hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday. 

Kevin: Yes, thank you, Jim. It's been great coming on. Thanks, mate. 

Lovely fun before, eh? Catch you later. 

Kevin: Cheers, Jim.