CCO’s Rigger Level II certification — the advanced rigging credential — rests on a written examination of 40 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes across six domains, including planning the rigging activity and selection of rigging components, and a practical examination in rigging a load for a level lift and for rotating a load. Certification runs five years. PassProfessor’s Rigger Level II program is in the works for the written examination; the hands-on component is not covered.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
This guide covers the Rigger Level II credential end to end: what the credential authorises, the written examination that gates it, the components around that examination — including, where this credential has one, the practical component PassProfessor does not cover — and a preparation plan organised on the published outline. It follows the issuing body’s own publications throughout, and where those publications are silent on a figure candidates commonly ask for, the guide reports the silence rather than filling it.
The companion program is in the works, built on the same primary documents this guide follows. Join the notify list and you will be emailed when enrollment opens. Until then, this guide gives preparation a structure worth starting now, because a written examination is never only an examination: it sits inside a route — eligibility, companion requirements, windows, and validity — and candidates who understand the whole route prepare for the sitting itself with better judgment about what matters.
The credential at a glance
| Fact of record | Detail |
|---|---|
| Designation | Certified Rigger Level II — the advanced rigging certification in CCO’s rigger program |
| Certifying body | CCO — the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO) |
| Written examination | 40 multiple-choice questions; 60 minutes (Rigger Candidate Handbook, RGR CH REV 06/19, Certified Rigger Level II Exams) |
| Practical examination — read this first | REQUIRED, and NOT covered by this program. The Level II practical examination demonstrates competency in rigging a load for a level lift and for rotating a load. PassProfessor preparation covers the written component only; no written program can rehearse the hands-on examination, and candidates must arrange their own practical preparation and sitting |
| Examination fees | Third-party fees paid to CCO under its published fee schedule: written $105; practical $95 |
| Validity and window | Certification is valid for five years; written and practical examinations may be taken in either order inside a 12-month window. A Level II recertification written pass also maintains Level I |
| Step-up rule | A Level I certificant may add Level II at any time; in the final certification year, the Level II written examination may be taken in place of the Level I recertification examination, with the Level II practical passed within 12 months (handbook) |
Reading the verified facts
A fact table compresses; this section decompresses the lines a candidate is most likely to misread, skip, or confuse with a neighbouring credential’s facts. Each entry below restates one row of the table and adds what the row means in practice.
Designation. Certified Rigger Level II — the advanced rigging certification in CCO’s rigger program
Certifying body. CCO — the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO)
Written examination. 40 multiple-choice questions; 60 minutes (Rigger Candidate Handbook, RGR CH REV 06/19, Certified Rigger Level II Exams)
Practical examination — read this first. REQUIRED, and NOT covered by this program. The Level II practical examination demonstrates competency in rigging a load for a level lift and for rotating a load. PassProfessor preparation covers the written component only; no written program can rehearse the hands-on examination, and candidates must arrange their own practical preparation and sitting
Examination fees. Third-party fees paid to CCO under its published fee schedule: written $105; practical $95
Validity and window. Certification is valid for five years; written and practical examinations may be taken in either order inside a 12-month window. A Level II recertification written pass also maintains Level I
Step-up rule. A Level I certificant may add Level II at any time; in the final certification year, the Level II written examination may be taken in place of the Level I recertification examination, with the Level II practical passed within 12 months (handbook)
The route, step by step
Step 1 — Establish the credential first
CCO’s route runs: meet the eligibility terms, pass the 40-question written examination, and pass the practical examination — rigging for a level lift and for rotating a load — inside 12 months, in either order. Certification runs five years; the Level II recertification written examination maintains both levels. This program prepares candidates for the written examination only. The hands-on component is not covered, and candidates should plan practical preparation with the same seriousness as the written sitting.
Step 2 — Clear the gates that precede the sitting
Candidates are experienced riggers moving into lift planning, foremen and rigging supervisors, Level I certificants stepping up under the handbook’s step-up rule, and specialty rigging crew members whose work includes critical and complex lifts. The pool is smaller and more senior than Level I’s; employers typically send candidates whose next assignment already requires the judgment the credential certifies. The practical consequence for planning is sequencing: any experience documentation, approval, companion certification, or course currency this credential requires should be started before — not after — written preparation peaks, because those steps run on the issuing body’s calendar, not the candidate’s.
Step 3 — Sit the written examination
The written sitting is the step this guide and its companion program exist for. Its published domains are: Scope of the Rigging Activity, Planning the Rigging Activity, Selection of Rigging Components, Technical Knowledge, Inspection, Execution of the Rigging Activity. The sitting is multiple-choice and timed as the facts table states; candidates should treat the outline’s proportions as a study budget, spending preparation time where the examination spends its questions. Score reporting follows the issuing body’s published practice, and domain-level performance information — where the body provides it — is the correct basis for any retake plan.
Step 4 — Complete what the written pass does not complete
A written pass is a component, not the credential. This credential also has a practical, hands-on component, and this program does not cover it. REQUIRED, and NOT covered by this program. The Level II practical examination demonstrates competency in rigging a load for a level lift and for rotating a load. PassProfessor preparation covers the written component only; no written program can rehearse the hands-on examination, and candidates must arrange their own practical preparation and sitting Written preparation and practical readiness are different preparations: this program builds the first, thoroughly, and candidates must arrange the second — training, supervised practice, and the practical sitting itself — through the channels the issuing body publishes. No page in this program should be read as suggesting otherwise. Candidates who plan this step before the sitting — booking, training, and documentation arranged — convert a pass into a credential without a dead season between them.
The examination outline in full
Scope of the Rigging Activity
Level II scope is defined by judgment: recognizing complex, non-routine, and critical lifts, the rigger’s planning authority within them, and the boundary between executing a lift plan and being qualified to write one. Items test whether the candidate knows which lifts demand Level II involvement before the hook is rigged.
Planning the Rigging Activity
The domain that separates Level II from Level I. Load weight determination from drawings and densities, center of gravity calculation for asymmetric loads, lift sequencing, crane and rigging interaction, environmental limits, and the documented plan — personnel, communications, contingencies — that a complex lift requires before execution begins.
Selection of Rigging Components
Choosing, not just using: sling and hardware selection by capacity under the actual hitch and angle geometry, multi-leg bridle tension distribution, spreader and equalizer beams, below-the-hook devices, and the derating arithmetic that turns catalog ratings into the configuration’s real working limit.
Technical Knowledge
The advanced mathematics and mechanics: tension calculations across unequal legs, center-of-gravity shifts during rotation, load control dynamics, block and tackle mechanical advantage, and the standards vocabulary of ASME B30.9, B30.10, and B30.26 that the selection decisions are documented in.
Inspection
Inspection at planning depth: periodic as well as pre-use inspection criteria, documentation and traceability of rigging inventory, removal criteria applied to the complex gear Level II assembles — beams, multi-leg bridles, specialty hardware — and the authority to condemn equipment a lift plan depends on.
Execution of the Rigging Activity
Executing the planned lift: rigging for a level lift and for controlled load rotation, tag line strategy, communication structure for multi-crane and blind elements, monitoring the lift against its plan, and exercising stop authority when execution and plan diverge.
Field notes: the credential at work
Level II work begins where the load stops being self-explanatory: the vessel that must arrive rotated, the module whose centre of gravity lives in a drawing office calculation, the pick two cranes will share. The Level II rigger’s product, before any steel moves, is a defensible account — weights determined, tensions computed, components selected with their deratings shown. The written examination samples exactly that account. Preparation should therefore be worked, not read: problems done in full, with the arithmetic shown, in the configurations the domain list names — unequal legs, rotation, shared loads — until the method is boring and only the numbers are interesting.
Common preparation errors
- Preparing by recognition — reading solutions instead of producing calculations; forty questions leave no room to reconstruct a forgotten method in the room.
- Treating the written pass as the credential: the practical examination, rigging for a level lift and for rotating a load, is a separate gate this program does not cover.
- Letting Level I fluency substitute for Level II planning material — the planning and selection domains are the credential, and they are the least rehearsed by daily work.
The reference shelf
The shelf: the CCO Rigger Candidate Handbook (RGR CH REV 06/19) — the Level II written outline across its six domains, the practical outline, and the reference list; ASME B30.9, B30.10, and B30.26 for slings, hooks, and hardware; ASME P30 for the lift planning discipline the planning domain reflects; and the rigging hardware manufacturers’ published capacity and derating data the selection domain computes from.
What makes this examination demanding?
Forty questions is a small canvas, and the examination uses it on calculation and selection: bridle tensions, derated capacities, center-of-gravity work. A candidate cannot pass on recognition memory; the arithmetic must be produced, correctly, under time pressure, in configurations — unequal legs, rotation, shared loads — where the simple formulas stop applying. It is also the batch’s clearest split credential: written mastery, however complete, certifies nothing without the hands-on practical, and this program states that boundary rather than blurring it.
Working the domains together
The published outline divides the syllabus for study purposes; the sitting does not respect the divisions, and neither does the job. A Level II rigger scenario on the page will typically open with its most visible domain and resolve in a different one — the chart question that is really a site question, the inspection item that is really a documentation item. The final phase of preparation should be built around that behaviour: mixed sets drawn from every domain at once (Scope of the Rigging Activity, Planning the Rigging Activity, Selection of Rigging Components, Technical Knowledge, Inspection, Execution of the Rigging Activity), taken at examination pace, reviewed by asking of each item not only what the correct answer was but which domain the item was actually grading. That second question, asked consistently across a few hundred items, builds the classification instinct that separates a prepared candidate from a knowledgeable one. Knowledge tells the candidate what is true; classification tells them what the item is about — and a timed sitting rewards the second as reliably as the first.
Domain study notes
Planning and Selection are the credential’s centre and should be studied as one subject: a plan that cannot name its components’ derated capacities is not finished, and a selection that does not answer the plan’s geometry is not a selection. Work the mathematics in full — bridle tensions with unequal legs, shared-load distribution, centre of gravity for asymmetric and rotating loads — showing every step, because the sitting’s forty questions sample method, not memory. Technical Knowledge supports the calculations with the standards vocabulary of B30.9, B30.10, and B30.26; Inspection at Level II depth adds periodic criteria and documentation for complex assemblies; Scope and Execution frame the whole as judgment — which lifts are Level II lifts, and how a planned lift is monitored against its plan and stopped when it departs from it. Candidates should finish preparation able to write a short lift plan unaided; that artefact is the best single predictor of written readiness this credential offers.
A realistic route timeline
A realistic Level II timeline starts from the step-up rules. A Level I certificant in the final certification year may take the Level II written in place of the Level I recertification examination — a scheduling opportunity worth planning around deliberately — with the Level II practical then due within 12 months of the written pass. New candidates without Level I plan the pair plainly: written and practical in either order inside the 12-month window. The practical band needs the most lead time in this batch’s rigger family: rigging a load for a level lift and for rotation requires equipment, a crane, and an examiner, assembled on a test site’s calendar. Certification runs five years, and the Level II recertification written examination thereafter maintains both levels — the timeline’s last entry, worth recording when the card arrives.
A preparation plan
Phase one — survey the whole outline. Read the candidate handbook or licensing guidance end to end, then work one practice set in every domain, including the domains closest to daily work. The purpose is cartography: most experienced candidates discover their weakest domain is not the one they expected, and the discovery is only useful while the calendar can still respond to it.
Phase two — domain rebuilding. Work the weakest domains from the primary documents outward: handbook chapter, outline subtopics, then practice sets in that domain alone. Keep the strong domains warm with short mixed sets rather than re-studying them; familiarity is not the same as examination readiness, but it decays more slowly than new learning builds.
Phase three — full sittings at examination pace. Sit complete timed practice in the examination’s format, under its time limit, without pausing the clock for review. Pacing is a trainable skill separate from knowledge: candidates lose sittings to unfinished sections more often than to unanswerable questions, and the loss is preventable in this phase and no other.
Phase four — route readiness. In the final stretch, shift weight from content to logistics: confirm identification and scheduling requirements from the issuing body’s current guidance, confirm the status of every companion step the route requires, and arrive at the sitting with the application file — not only the knowledge — in order.
Studying with the handbook open
There is a discipline that separates candidates who pass this kind of examination from candidates who merely know the work, and it is terminological. The issuing body publishes its material in a fixed vocabulary: roles have defined names, criteria have defined thresholds, and procedures have defined sequences. The examination is written in that vocabulary, and it grades answers that use it. Study, therefore, with the primary documents open and a notebook beside them, and build the habit of restating every piece of field knowledge in the published terms — the Level II rigger candidate’s own experience, translated. Where crew usage and published usage differ, the published usage wins in the examination room, every time, and the time to discover each difference is during preparation, when it costs nothing, rather than in the sitting, when it costs the credential. This sounds like pedantry. On a criterion-referenced professional examination, it is the whole game.
Retake, validity, and recertification planning
Plan the retake, if one is needed, the week the result arrives. The score report’s domain structure is the plan’s skeleton: rebuild the weakest domain from the primary documents outward, hold the strong domains with short mixed sets, and sit again while the examination’s format is still familiar — pacing skill decays faster than knowledge. Keep the route’s frame in view while doing so: Certification is valid for five years; written and practical examinations may be taken in either order inside a 12-month window. A Level II recertification written pass also maintains Level I. On the far side of a pass, the same discipline applies in reverse. Validity is a date, and recertification — whether by written examination, by practical examination, or by continuing education, as this credential prescribes — is a requirement with lead times, not an administrative afterthought. The candidates who never lapse are not the most organised people in the trade; they are simply the ones who wrote the date down when the credential arrived.
The sitting itself
Arrive with the identification the issuing body requires and nothing the testing rules prohibit. Work the sitting in the order that suits the format: answer the certain items first, mark the uncertain ones, and return with the remaining time — the domains are interleaved in most sittings, so a difficult patch is a patch, not a verdict on the whole paper. Use the whole clock; a written examination of this kind rewards the candidate who checks arithmetic and re-reads stems in the final minutes over the candidate who leaves early on confidence.
After the sitting
Results and score reporting follow the issuing body’s published practice. A pass starts the completion steps in Step 4 above — plan them immediately, while windows and currency dates are fresh. A shortfall is information with an address: the domain structure of the outline tells the candidate where the rebuild belongs, and the retake rules in the issuing body’s handbook govern when the next sitting can happen. Neither outcome is a judgment on the candidate’s competence at the work itself; the examination measures examination performance, and preparation is how the two are brought into line.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Rigger Level II credential? It is the credential this page covers: Certified Rigger Level II — the advanced rigging certification in CCO’s rigger program. The Level II rigger is the person the crew calls when the lift stops being routine: the asymmetric vessel that must be rotated in the air, the multi-crane pick, the load whose center of gravity is a calculation rather than a guess. The issuing body is CCO (NCCCO).
Who issues the Level II rigger credential? CCO (NCCCO). That body writes or administers the examination, sets the requirements, and makes the certification or licensing decision. PassProfessor prepares candidates for the written examination and has no part in the decision.
What written examination must candidates pass? 40 multiple-choice questions; 60 minutes (Rigger Candidate Handbook, RGR CH REV 06/19, Certified Rigger Level II Exams)
Is there a practical or hands-on examination? REQUIRED, and NOT covered by this program. The Level II practical examination demonstrates competency in rigging a load for a level lift and for rotating a load. PassProfessor preparation covers the written component only; no written program can rehearse the hands-on examination, and candidates must arrange their own practical preparation and sitting
What is the passing standard? CCO sets the passing standard for its examinations by criterion-referenced standard setting and reports each candidate’s performance by domain. This page states no percentage figure for the standard, because CCO does not publish it as a simple percentage for this designation — inventing one would misstate the record.
What does the examination cost? Third-party fees paid to CCO under its published fee schedule: written $105; practical $95 Those are third-party fees owed to the issuing body — not PassProfessor charges. This page prints no PassProfessor price.
How long does the credential last? Certification is valid for five years; written and practical examinations may be taken in either order inside a 12-month window. A Level II recertification written pass also maintains Level I
What will the PassProfessor program cover? The written examination named above — its published domains, its format, and its pacing — together with the certification or licensing route around it as the issuing body publishes it. Where the credential has a practical component, that component is not covered, and the program says so wherever the credential is described.
How should preparation be sequenced? Work the published domains in the outline’s own proportions first, then sit full timed practice in the examination’s format, then return to the weakest domain with the handbook open. The preparation plan section of this guide lays the sequence out in phases, with the route’s deadlines — windows, currency dates, and approval gates — planned backward from the sitting.
What happens if a candidate does not pass? The candidate retakes the written examination under the issuing body’s published retake rules, using the domain-level performance reporting the score report provides to rebuild where the sitting was lost. Windows matter here: where the credential imposes a completion window on a set of examinations, a retake consumes it, and the route section of this guide states the window that applies to this credential.
When will the PassProfessor program open? The program is in the works and enrollment is not open yet. Join the notify list on this page and you will be emailed when enrollment opens; the companion exam guide is available to read now for planning your preparation.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with CCO (NCCCO)? No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider and is not affiliated with CCO (NCCCO). Nothing in the program is reported to the issuing body, and completing preparation is not a step in the certification or licensing process.