Interviewed by Jimmy Webb
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Danny on a couple of jobs. He was a slinger on a Mace site in Stratford and a crane supervisor on a Skanska site near Liverpool Street. We’re conducting this interview whilst having a cheeky pint or two in a pub in East Village, Stratford, while also having a good catch up.
Danny is a 39-year-old tower crane driver, who lives in Kent with his girlfriend and three children.
He has been in construction for around 20 years, doing a variety of jobs, like drylining, fire cable installing, 6 years on the railway, and a 9-year stint as a groundworker.
Danny left the groundworks role to become a slinger/signaller in 2017. After 2 years of gaining experience, he became a Crane Supervisor. Then, 3 years later, in April 2023, Danny did a tower crane course, paid for by HTC Wolffkran, his new employer.
JW – Right Dan, like me, you’ve done a vast array of jobs. What would you say were your least and most enjoyable?
DM – I’d say my least enjoyable jobs, which would probably go for everyone, would be the labouring. Nobody really likes to be run around like that.
Probably one of my most interesting jobs would have been crew work, which involved setting up film sets, festivals, stages and stuff like that. There was a lot of travelling around the country, which was quite interesting.
And then, obviously, my newest interest is lifting.
JW – Crew work. That sounds like a cool one. Did you get to travel the world doing that?
DM – Not so much the world, more within Europe, like Germany and places like that.
JW – It’s easy for people in a lifting operation to get the hump with each other, judge, or talk negatively about each other. Having been a slinger/signaller, crane supervisor, and now a crane driver, you’ve experienced the pressures of all the different roles within the lifting team. Can you now empathise with the people that do each role?
DM – I mean, being a signaler, it’s not just the grief they get off their crane supervisor. It’s the grief they get from every single black hat, plus the construction manager as well.
They kind of don’t know who to listen to sometimes, unless you’ve got a firm crane supervisor. This can make your slinger maybe not as accurate as he should be. They could lose themself a bit, rush certain things, get things wrong.
Being a crane supervisor, it steps it up a gear. Because you’ve now got to delegate to the slingers and be a strong supervisor, otherwise you’re going to get run over by the other black hats.
You kind of need to hope for a good team and maybe a good construction manager that’s going to back you up as well. If you haven’t got a good construction manager to back you up, again, you’re kind of lost. You’re trying to do your best, but without a strong unit, your
slingers will end up listening to the other black hats, which is not what you want.
JW – Do you feel that the pressure from the management filters down to everybody?
DM – One hundred percent. It’s down to you as the supervisor. You’re the main tool of the job and if you get it wrong, then that could mean concrete being late, shutters not being put in, walls not being ready. The list goes on.
Sometimes you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’ve still got it wrong.
JW – So what about for a crane driver?
DM – As you know, I’m new to it. Personally, I like it. That could well be because I am new to it. The novelty is still there. I thought that, because I was a very active person, I wouldn’t be able to tolerate sitting up there by myself.
But compared to the jobs I did on the ground for my former company, this is a dream. They had me run around like a lunatic. There was a hell of a lot of stress and a hell of a lot of radios and a lot of calling and shouting. So it’s quite nice to just sit up there with just two radios. A crash radio and one radio telling me what to do. I’m enjoying it.
JW – Absolutely. So you can understand from being both a slinger and supervisor, probably asking the crane drivers to do things that might push the boundaries. And now, being the crane driver, you can see the other side of it as well when you can’t do those things, yeah?
DM – Massively. Like I say to all my friends, including yourself, I will never ever slag off a crane driver again.
It’s a completely different world up there and I believe that it should be within a slinging course for them to go up to have a look. I think it would change the way they bank. It would improve their banking for sure.
JW – So out of all these roles that you’ve done, what would you say is the most challenging?
DM – I’d say the crane supervisor. Yeah, that one was. I had to adapt very quickly; I had no choice. I started on a job that was halfway done. They must have gone through 15 crane supervisors, maybe more, and well over 50 slingers.
I went there as a slinger. They asked me to do my course, which I did.
The crane supervisor that I was supposed to be working with quit because he was under too much pressure, which then left me to run five cranes by myself. I continued through the duration of the job like that.
But my construction manager, who was very much on my side, told me that if I could run that job, I could run any job.
JW – You had a couple of years as a slinger before becoming a crane supervisor. Personally, I think that’s enough time to gain experience, but others might not. Did you get the respect you deserved as a supervisor? And was it a slow transition or were you thrown in the deep end?
I think you kind of answered the second question, but did you get the respect?
DM – I was quite lucky because, as a slinger, I was working alongside yourself and other experienced drivers that were good to me, so I picked it up quite quickly.
And then, where I was already working with most of the lads, the supervisors and stuff, they knew that I picked it up well. So I gained respect as a slinger quite quickly.
Then, from me putting an orange hat on to a black hat, I was lucky in the fact that I already knew half of the gang. And they already knew that I was good at my job. They’d heard that I’d done a great job elsewhere. Which meant they were very happy when I arrived on their job.
JW – What made you want to leave the ground and go up and work in the sky?
DM – There was a mixture of things there. I was commuting from Kent, which was costing me £220 a week. The company I was working for didn’t really want to help me out with that. When we were coming to the end of jobs, as everybody knows, you end up on flat hours. Flat hours are not good enough for me.
I was always constantly having to work overtime to make things right, which I shouldn’t really have to do. So I decided to leave. I got a job close to my house, which made me see the benefits of not having to travel.
But that didn’t last forever and I saw an opportunity to become a driver. I spoke to my partner about it. I said I think I owe it to myself to give it a shot because if I let this go, I’m gonna say what if?
So we both had a chat about it and both come to the decision to just go for it.
It wasn’t a planned thing or anything like that. I literally got a phone interview.
JW – Was it a difficult decision to make?
DM – I didn’t really see any type of danger because I’ve worked around cranes for a long time now. The danger side of it didn’t affect my decision. It was more the perks that come with the job that helped to sway me.
When I actually got right into it, I thought, I really enjoyed it. And I put 110% into making it work.
JW – The company you now work for, HTC Wolffkran paid for your course. Do you pay them back for that? How long did the course take and how much would it have cost if you paid for it outright?
DM – Yes, they take £2 an hour out of my wages to cover the course. I’m almost paid up now.
The course took ten days at Bircham Newton, the construction college. I think it costed around £3500. That’s with food and accommodation.
JW – Cool. That’s good to know in case anybody wants to go down the same route.
Having personally seen and experienced the altercations and negative relationships people can have on building sites, how have you managed to deal with that? Do you think you’ve dealt with situations the right way? And what advice would you give to others in a similar situation?
DM – When you’re up in the crane, you tend to have a bit more power.
You get a bit more of the overall say. When you’re a slinger, it’s a very tricky one.
Sometimes as a slinger, if you appear to be difficult, you can find yourself out the door and not welcome back.
As a crane supervisor, well, it’s a constant battle. You’re constantly battling with people. Especially when you’ve got six people asking for different lifts. There’s rarely a togetherness. It’s quite often a full-on argument until somebody has to make a decision. And that normally ends up being the construction manager.
But, you know, it’s very hard to explain how to deal with something because it’s difficult when you’re under so much pressure. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a couple of times I’ve lost my temper quite massively and I’ve gone and said sorry to the person. Even though it’s probably their fault.
Yeah, it’s hard to put in words how to deal with certain situations until you’re in them.
JW – I know what you mean. I suppose the best thing to do would be to keep cool, wouldn’t it? Keep calm and communicate.
DM – That’s the only advice I could ever give somebody. Just try your best to stay calm. But when you’re under a massive amount of pressure, it’s very hard sometimes.
JW – Do you feel you’ve got the support from management or not?
DM – Some, some not.
JW – Okay, enough said. What advice would you give to people thinking about getting into each category? Let’s start with slinger/signaller, then crane supervisor and finally a crane driver.
DM – I believe that, regardless of whether you want to be a crane supervisor or a driver, you should always start as a slinger. I think you should go through that stage before you be a crane driver, no matter what.
Just to understand, because, and I’m not knocking anybody that does it, but you do get maybe a security guard that goes straight up to a crane and doesn’t even know what a stillage is, for an example.
Whereas it benefits so much, and it’s made me understand the processes better. It’s helped me to become a better driver. I kind of know how the slinger’s minds work and know what they want next.
As a slinger, I would say you need to have thick skin. Be prepared to work very hard because the job is paid well and your expected to put a good shift in. And be ready to learn. Every day is a learning curve. There are brand new things you can lift every day that you’ve never seen. So you’ve just got to go in with an open mind.
JW – Yeah, I totally agree. I’ve always said that a slinger course should offer at least a little crane driving experience, and vice versa. To know how each other’s jobs work. You kind of get a bit of telepathy then, working with each other. If the slinger is good enough, in a sense, they will actually be able to drive the crane for the driver, especially on blind lifts. Because they know how the crane works.
For example, a slinger that can catch a swing for a crane driver on a blind lift is golden.
DM – Yeah, absolutely. Or you get your load bankers. For me as a crane driver, working with a load banker, I have to put in a serious amount of effort.
JW – What do you mean by load banker?
DM – A load banker is someone who, rather than watching what the crane, the ropes and the hook are doing, they’re just banking the loads.
For example, they might want you to slew left, but don’t watch how the hook is swinging. It could be swinging right and they’re not waiting for the swing to come back to left before they instruct you, as they should. This then creates a bigger swing.
JW – I see what you mean. They just go through the motions. Yeah, I agree.
Sometimes when you’re up the crane and you get a new slinger, and they say something, you just know this person knows what they’re talking about. They might only say one thing for you to realise they know exactly what they’re doing.
DM – Yep, it instantly instills trust, so that you don’t have to keep asking them questions.
JW – Exactly. So, the last question. Tell me something not many people know about you.
I was an extra in The Only Way Is Essex, the TV series. I was on telly twice.
JW – Really? You’ll have to send me the link. Have you got it?
DM – My mum’s got it. I’ll get it for ya.
JW – Great stuff. Alright, that wasn’t really the last question. I have a bonus one. Knowing what you know now, what would you say to 16-year-old Danny?
DM – Ooh, don’t know. What a question. That’s a hard one.
I suppose I’d try to give him career advice. And tell him to knuckle down and not waste opportunities. I think of my son. He’s 15. I’m now trying to pass on what I know about the crane industry, to try to get him involved, because he’s got a chance of having a very good career.
I never had that. I had to go for a million different trades. No one ever really steered me in the right direction.
JW – Is he interested in the cranes?
DM – Well, now he’s seen what I do, he’s very interested in it.
He’s torn between two now. A bricklayer or something to do with cranes.
JW – Well, no disrespect to bricklayers, but having laid bricks from time to time, and knowing how it made my back feel, I know what one I’d be choosing, mate.
DM – So do I. I’ll keep trying to tell him. But I’ve already told him he must start from the bottom.
JW – Agreed. Thanks very much, Dan. You’ve been a star.
DM – Been a pleasure, mate. Fancy another beer?
JW – Fuck it, why not?