Cables (and chains) must be inspected, by law, every 3 months. This is the only mandatory periodic inspection that, as well as at his initiative, must also be carried out by the owner of the lifting equipment, or if the machine is not available to him, by its user.
Inspection of cables must be carried out, by law, by staff qualified for such an operation: unless it can be demonstrated that internal staff of the company have received professional training adequate to qualify them for this purpose, the owner or user of the machine cannot certify the correct implementation of the inspection. However, the fact remains that if the inspection is carried out by internal company staff, even if they are qualified, the responsibility of any accidents remains with the company that owns or uses the lifting equipment.
On the contrary, if the cable inspection is entrusted to a third party (such as Imola Gru Srl), the responsibility is assumed by this third party from the moment it issues the declaration of correct implementation of the inspection, along with its judgement. The only responsibility that remains with the owner/user is to make sure the inspection is carried out legally, and the duty to check the credentials of the person or company that carries out the inspection (for example, they cannot claim to be free of responsibility if they have employed a company that does not officially provide assistance for lifting equipment to inspect the cables).
The inspection, once completed, must be written into the audit log by whoever is in charge of the machine, based on the declaration issued by the technician in charge (upon request from inspecting bodies, he must be able to provide the declaration of the person/company that carried out the inspection).
The cables and chains must undergo quarterly checks, in the absence of specific indications on the part of the manufacturer, pursuant to Italian Leg. Decree 81/08, attachment 6, point 3.1.2.
