Today as an industry we are still faced with one serious question and that is what is the standard. We can as a group sit here and type in our life experiences and all tell a story about how we do specific things with respect to our pumps but the reality is that today there is no real industry wide or global standard.

There is no conformity whereas we all do things the same way to a specific standard and until that day sometime in the future, we will all in our own ways be entitled to claiming our way or our individual procedures are safer or better than someone else’s, but the reality is that that battle of who is right and who is wrong, cannot today be won because there is no unified standard that every pump manufacture and every country follows to run a concrete pump of the same boom class and weight.

Hopefully that day is on its way and will arrive soon but until then teach your operators and your people that over killing the safety issues is always better. Teach them to take their time and be methodical especially when something is going wrong or when there is a plug,  a mechanical or electrical problem, and finally teach them to understand that every time they the operators make a decision in the field it is that one moment that one split second decision that could determine who makes it home that night.

Think about it do you want to be the guy who made the right or wrong choice; I think the answer is pretty obvious.

The above is an excerpt from a previous post. I thought that it was well worth bring forward because it is a very valid question.

I always assumed that the instructions from a pump mfg’ were the same, country to country; but I really do not know if that is true. The people that market their equipment in the US have developed a standard. The roots of that standard are in the Pump Manufacturers organization. It has made knowing the “rules of the road” much easier here in the US.

OSHA, being the main watchdog agency in the US will accept the view of the CPMA as writ, here. Is that the norm in other jurisdictions? I do not know. Perhaps someone from within that group or someone… anyone that has that information will come to this forum and let us know.

Any way that you slice it we do need a standard.

Hello Bob,

My name is Duane Remus, I am the technical director for Reed concrete pumps. I just wanted to drop a line to let you and the other readers know that along with Putzmeister, Schwing, Conforms, the Army Corps. of engineers and a few other dedicated guys, we have worked with the ASME on a safety standard, it is now approved and ready for printing, it is the ASME B30.27 safety standard for concrete placing machines. This standard compiles all the safety documents from before and puts them in a coherent usable form for both manufacturers and users of the equipment. It was reviewed talked about refined and voted on for years in the B30 commitee to assure accuracy.  It was a very long road to go down, but as manufacturers we felt it was in every ones best interest to do. I hope this is the answer you were looking for.

Best regards,
Duane Remus