Appointed person
Also called AP
The individual responsible for the overall planning and management of a lifting operation, including selecting the crane, assessing ground conditions and approving the lift plan. On complex or high-risk lifts the appointed person is often a separate role from the crane supervisor; on simpler lifts, one person may hold both responsibilities.
In practice
Ground is one of the appointed person’s responsibilities, and it is the one most often delegated to whoever supplies the mats. The supplier can say what a given mat spreads a stated reaction to; only the appointed person can confirm that the allowable ground bearing pressure has been established, that it applies at the set-up position, and that the configuration in the plan is the one the crane will be rigged in.
Where this comes from: UK lifting operations practice as contractors operate it. This describes the role in use on site; it is not a statutory definition.
Where it matters on site
When a hire desk is asked to “confirm the mats are suitable”, the honest answer is that suitability is a lift planning judgement made against site-specific information the supplier does not hold. What we can do is give the specification, the published safe working load and the plan area, so the appointed person has real numbers to plan against — which is the material our CPD-accredited seminars are written for.