Daytona Beach Crane Certification Prep for Beachside and Riverfront Crews

Lessons from rebuilding a racetrack

Daytona Rising replaced the Speedway's frontstretch seating with a new steel stadium structure between July 2013 and January 2016. Barton Malow led the design-build team, and the track hosted sixteen NASCAR races while the work went on, with crowds of around 100,000 at the biggest events. Five new entrances, more than 60 suites and dozens of escalators and elevators were added, all without touching the racing surface.

For crane crews the takeaway is planning. Lifts on a live venue get scheduled around events, swing paths are fenced off from the public, and every pick has to be finished and secured before the gates open. Projects with that kind of pressure are where a qualified signal person and a written lift plan earn their keep.

Concrete and glass on the Halifax

Across town, Brown & Brown built its 11-story glass headquarters on more than 13 acres along North Beach Street, facing the Halifax River. Barton Malow handled construction management and self-performed the concrete, and the building was finished around 2020 to 2021.

Riverfront high-rise work combines tower cranes or large hydraulic cranes with waterfront soils, steady river breezes and limited laydown room. Downtown sites seldom have space to assemble a long boom on the ground, so assist cranes, careful staging and good signals do much of the work.

The beachside after 2022

Ian and Nicole hit the beaches south of town hard. Daytona Beach Shores declared 24 buildings east of A1A unsafe, and reopening each one required a structural engineer's sign-off. A year later, rebuilding on that stretch included new homes on 30-foot pilings and 12-foot seawalls. The state relaxed some seawall permitting rules in Volusia to speed repairs.

That kind of repair work looks different from new construction. Cranes often sit on the beach or on temporary fill, sheet pile goes in beside occupied towers, and the swing radius is boxed in by balconies and power lines. Ground conditions change with every tide and storm, so mats, outrigger checks and a clear exclusion zone are standard practice.

Getting certified while you work

Florida has no crane operator license, and the state has preempted local crane rules, so Daytona Beach does not add one. What applies is federal OSHA's Subpart CC: accredited certification plus an employer evaluation for operators, and qualified riggers and signal persons.

Our online course covers the written exam material with exam-style practice questions you can repeat as often as you want, on any device. The written test itself can be taken with an online proctor or at a test center; the practical is always done in person on a crane at a practical test site.

• Signal person for crowded downtown and beachside sites
• Tower crane operator for riverfront and oceanfront high-rise work
• Rigger Level 2 for engineered lifts on venues and towers
• Mobile crane operator for seawall, pile and commercial work