Engineering the perfect lift plan with Dan Durrett, Maxim Crane | TCNA 2026

“Gravity is undefeated. It’s always going to win.”

That was said by Dan Durrett, director of engineering at Maxim Crane Works, during his session at the 2026 Tower Cranes North America Conference, who used the blunt phrase to illustrate: engineers, managers and dealers can’t out-plan physics, but they can out-plan surprises.

Dan Durrett, Maxim Crane, presents at the 2026 Tower Cranes North America Conference. Photo: KHL Group

Durrett argued that a lift plan isn’t paperwork or a box to check, but a communication tool, and its real job is converting unknowns into knowns before a crew ever mobilises. He laid out a simple discipline: document the knowns, list the unknowns and assign each one to whoever is actually responsible for resolving it.

“You’re not just selling a crane rental,” he said. “You’re really selling a plan and the certainty that you can execute the work the way that you sold it.”

Durrett doesn’t stop at the pitch, as the full session goes deep into the actual mechanics: real OSHA and ASME citations, a working example of how to assign and track unknowns item by item, and the specific failure points unique to tower cranes and multi-crane lifts. Anyone responsible for signing off on a lift plan will want the details.

His closing advice was simple: share the plan early, not the morning of, and assign every unknown a name and a standard to back it up.

“There is no perfect plan,” Durrett said, “but a good plan does shrink the unknown space one unverified item at a time.”

Watch the whole presentation from TCNA 2026 in Nashville here.