Walter Watson is Ireland’s leading manufacturer of overhead cranes. Founded in 1967 in County Down, it now operates from locations in Eire, Northern Ireland, and Scotland and services customers throughout Ireland, the UK and further afield.
The company’s interests span the steel, reinforcement, lifting and agricultural sectors, with the manufacturing, supply, installation and service of overhead cranes forming an important part of the business. Customers include the ESB (the Irish Electrical Supply Board), Liebherr, Bombardier Aerospace, Northern Ireland Railways and Corus.
To support its service operations, Walter Watson turned to CoreRFID’s cross-border lifting compliance software to help save costs and improve quality in inspection and testing services.
Cross-border lifting compliance software: meeting two sets of safety standards
As a company operating on both sides of the Irish border, Walter Watson has to work within two sets of health and safety standards, those from the UK’s Health & Safety Executive (HSE) and from the Irish Health and Safety Authority. On top of this, codes of practice from the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA), a worldwide body, offer important guidance.
Walter Watson needed cross-border lifting compliance software that would conform to LOLER and PUWER regulations as well as HSA rules. CheckedOK meets the requirements of both.
“Our CheckedOK system is delivering the benefits we hoped for. CoreRFID’s installation and support services helped us to get up and running quickly in line with our original timetable.”
– David Burtney, Service Manager, Walter Watson
Adapting the system to the company’s needs
CheckedOK has over 100 sets of inspection questionnaires for lifting equipment included as standard, so it was possible to quickly adapt it to Walter Watson’s needs and the range of cranes and lifting systems it supports. Walter Watson has found particular value in three features: the training dashboard, the breakdown parts feature, and the Report Manager.
Keeping track of training
The training dashboard ensures engineers working with a particular item of equipment have received appropriate training, and that their training is up to date. Walter Watson needed to keep track of qualifications covering driving, fork-lift truck handling, first aid, crane training and more. The system monitors 16 categories of training and lets Walter Watson specify the training interval and start date for each, giving the company better control.
Managing breakdowns
CheckedOK is mostly used for planned inspections, scheduled as part of the overall management of an asset. When responding to a breakdown, the work required is often less predictable. CheckedOK’s breakdown feature allows work to be recorded even where it hasn’t been previously planned.
Creating tailored reports
Report Manager helps CheckedOK users make the most of the data accumulated by the system. Items are quickly identified by RFID tags, making it easy to link inspection data to the relevant asset and create reports. Users in different roles at Walter Watson need different reports on a regular basis. Using Report Manager, they can batch a number of reports together and download them in a single zip file, making them easy to archive and share by email.
Moving to the cloud
In November 2025, Walter Watson moved to the SaaS version of CheckedOK, part of the same cross-border lifting compliance software the company has relied on since installation. There’s no local server to maintain, updates are applied automatically without any action needed from Walter Watson’s team, and engineers and managers across all three of its locations, Eire, Northern Ireland and Scotland, can access the same live system regardless of which site they’re working from.
The Benefits
Walter Watson’s inspection system provides:
- Rapid collection of inspection results
- Ordering of breakdown repair parts
- A way to record training or certification required, with prompts for renewals
- Replacement of paper and pencil records
- Conformance with Irish and UK safety codes of practice as appropriate
- Easy visibility of reports and certificates for Walter Watson’s clients
- Cloud-based access across all three of the company’s locations, with no local infrastructure to manage