Duty of Care and Licensing Obligations
A duty of care means you must act as a reasonable, competent crane operator would in the same circumstances, anticipating foreseeable harm and controlling it before it occurs. For a licensed operator this translates into concrete obligations: operate only the crane class you are licensed for, operate within the manufacturer's specifications and the load chart, conduct required pre-start checks, stop work when conditions become unsafe, and report defects rather than working around them. The licence is evidence of competence, not a shield - a licensed operator can still be found negligent, and 'the supervisor told me to' is not a defence against a known unsafe act.
Key concepts to name in answers: competence (training, assessment, experience, currency), supervision (a licensed operator may still require supervision depending on task complexity and site rules), and the right to refuse or stop unsafe work. Operators also carry a duty to maintain their own fitness for work - fatigue, medication, alcohol and stress all affect judgement and reaction time, and many jurisdictions impose specific obligations around them. Record-keeping supports duty of care: log books, pre-start inspection records, maintenance and repair records and handover notes demonstrate that duties were discharged.
Traps in questions: confusing the operator's duty with the dogger's or rigger's duty; assuming a licence permits any lifting task; assuming a verbal instruction overrides a load chart or a defect; and forgetting the duty to report near misses, not just injuries. Another common trap is the 'custom and practice' fallacy - because a site has always done something a certain way does not make it lawful or safe.
Worked example: a supervisor asks you to lift a load slightly above the charted capacity 'just this once' because the load is only marginally over. The correct response is to refuse, document the refusal, and propose a control such as reducing radius, using a larger crane, or splitting the load.