Prattville Crane and Rigging Exam Prep for Mill and Contractor Crews

Outage season at the containerboard mill

International Paper’s Prattville Containerboard Mill opened in 1967 under Union Camp and is Autauga County’s largest manufacturer, with more than 600 employees. It turns regional pine and hardwood into linerboard for shipping boxes and produces on the order of a million tons of paper a year on a site of about 6,700 acres.

Mills like this schedule planned shutdowns to rebuild dryer sections, replace rolls, change out pumps and work on recovery boilers and digesters. Those outages compress weeks of lifting into a few days, often with several cranes on site, contractors from out of state and operators working nights. Picks happen between pipe racks, over live process lines and around steam, which is why mill safety departments expect rigging crews who can read a load chart, figure sling tension at an angle and talk clearly on the radio.

What an outage crew is expected to know

Every item on that list appears in the written exams for operator, rigger and signal person certification, and our lessons and practice questions are built around them. The courses most Prattville candidates pick are Rigger Level I, Rigger Level II, Mobile Crane Operator and Signal Person.

• Estimating the weight and center of gravity of irregular equipment like rolls, gearboxes and pump skids.
• Choosing slings and hardware, and derating them for angle and edge contact.
• Standard hand signals and voice signals for blind picks inside a building.
• Ground bearing, cribbing and mat placement on fill and gravel lay-down yards.
• How wind, wet conditions and power lines change what the chart allows.

No local license, but federal rules still decide who runs the crane

Neither Alabama nor the City of Prattville licenses crane operators. On construction work, including equipment installs during a mill outage, federal OSHA’s Subpart CC applies: operators need certification from an accredited testing body under 1926.1427 and an evaluation by their employer, signal persons must be qualified under 1926.1428, and riggers hooking loads in the fall zone must be qualified under 1926.1425. Overhead cranes used for day-to-day production fall under the general industry rules at 1910.179.

Federal OSHA enforces these rules for private employers statewide. Smaller contractors who want a second set of eyes on their program can ask UA SafeState, the University of Alabama’s free and confidential on-site consultation service, which does not issue citations. Details are in our Alabama requirements guide.

Studying from Prattville

Lessons and practice questions open on a phone, tablet or laptop at any hour, so you can study in the truck before a night shift or at home on a rain day. When you are ready, you book the written test with the certifying body, through Online Proctored Testing, a computer test center or a test event. The practical exam is taken in person on the right crane. Supervisors training several people can use crew enrollment through our form.