Mobile elevated work platforms (MEWPs), such as scissor lifts, are increasingly used as a safe and versatile means of access to work at height. They’re particularly suitable for fire systems installation and maintenance in larger buildings (with strong floors!).
Although they’re expensive to hire or buy, relative to a tower scaffold, there are many advantages — engineers can reposition themselves frequently, because the machines can be manoeuvred by the user without the need to climb out of the carrier.
Despite the fact that the machines have the potential to make work at height much safer than it might otherwise be, there’s still a risk of injury, for instance, if the MEWP overturns, if it runs into structures or pedestrians, or if materials or equipment are dropped onto others below.
Firesafe Installations’ prosecution
The Health & Safety Executive recently prosecuted Firesafe Installations Ltd. of Knowsley after a fatal accident which occurred in December 2009. Employee Shaun Scurry was working at Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, East London, when he became trapped between the guardrail of the scissor lift and some overhead ducting. A colleague was present nearby but was unfamiliar with the ground-level controls on the machine and was not able to release him and bring him down.
The HSE criticised the company’s arrangements for familiarisation training, saying that although Firesafe Installations could not be held directly accountable for the death, the company should have done more.
After the hearing, HSE inspector Eileen Gascoigne said, “This tragic case underlines the importance of familiarisation training — not only for direct operatives, but also those who may be required to take control in the event of an emergency.”
Firesafe Installations pled guilty at Southwark Crown Court to breaching the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. It was fined GB pound 30,000 and ordered to pay GB pound 29,000 in costs.
Research outcome
The incident is an example of the type of accident reviewed in a research report published by the HSE in February 2013. The report analysed the common factors in accidents involving MEWPs which occurred in several countries — primarily the UK, the US, New Zealand, and Australia. The work focused on MEWP occupants being trapped against overhead or adjacent objects whilst in the platform of the MEWP.
One specific risk of operating a MEWP in a confined area, is that the operator may be pushed onto the control panel when in collision with a structural element. This can lead to “sustained involuntary operation” of the machine, crushing the driver and simultaneously preventing him or her from reaching the stop controls.
The commonalities among the accidents analysed included:
Fire installation and maintenance engineers are likely to use MEWPs sporadically, as much of their work will be at ground level or use other forms of access. This category of irregular user is one identified in the research as being at particular risk of making mistakes.
How to respond?
If your staff is using MEWPs, make sure that they not only have formal training in the type of machine, but also receive routine familiarisation training at each location and each time a different make or model of MEWP is used. For each job there should be someone present at ground level who knows how to operate the ground controls, including the emergency descent controls.
For those who wish to know more, the most direct source of guidance on the topic has been published by the Strategic Forum Plant Safety Group. The free-to-download information sheet is titled Best Practice Guidance for MEWPs – avoiding trapping / crushing injuries to people in the platform.
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I’ve seen various levels of training for scissor and boom lifts and I have to say that no matter how good the training is if you’re not enforcing safe use policies and making sure employees stay up to date with equipment then it’s only slightly better than not training them. I don’t know how well the employee in the scissor lift was trained but it sounds like he was in a dangerous position to begin with. Having what sounds line an untrained employee on the ground didn’t do him any favors either.
That’s the key isn’t it though? It’s one thing having one person properly trained, another entirely having two. Halve the risk. Tragic example of what can go wrong.
I haven’t dug into the details of this accident but I wonder if the worker on the ground knew how to run the scissor lift from the basket or if they had even seen that type of lift in the past. I know for things like cabling jobs you get general labor many times who aren’t expected to be able to do much more than carry boxes and pull lines. Even finding the controls on the base of a scissor lift might be difficult if you’ve never worked around one.
It’s always possible that it was a contract worker, but either way what we do know is he wasn’t adequately trained and he should have been.
Rob, are there any “standards” regarding this type of training. Not to kick employers under the bus but I’ve been in many companies where training wasn’t much more than don’t touch that, watch out for this, this goes up, this goes down, don’t ignore the warning lights and off you go.
In the UK it’s covered by the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. There’s a recent warning relating to them here: http://www.hse.gov.uk/safetybulletins/scissorlifts.htm
In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration recognise there’s some confusion around the status of scissor lifts, and in this guidance I found they recognise that scissor lifts are NOT covered by standards that relate to elevated lifts, but ARE covered by standards relating to the use of scaffolds. So, in other words they fall somewhere bettwen a scaffold and a crane, I think?
Thank you for the insight. I guess when a piece of equipment falls in the gaps like this it can be tough to say when training is sufficient. You don’t have to worry about your scaffolding rising up 6″ and pinning you to the ceiling so it’s kind of odd to have them classified in a similar manner.
Kind of odd indeed! And it looks like even OSHA recognise that. (so why not do something about it)
Good question, sadly it often takes accidents like the one in the blog post to bring attention to issues like this. We use scissors and boom style lifts frequently and I know that our teams who coordinate the jobs are very particular about knowing floor load limits, ceiling heights and any obstacles that might need to be traversed but most of that is probably because we are on a customer’s site. With scissor lifts being used in a warehouse that someone is on every day and they don’t give much thought to where they were taking it I think a… Read more »
It is rather sad and unfortunate that incidents like this have to occur before there is change or improvements made to the current systems or processes. But one can only hope that these changes stick and will be able to save lives and prevent such accidents in the future.
Agreed, it is sad especially since all of them were fairly young or had young famalies. We’ve come along way since the days of bucket lines but I think we can always do a little better. Hopefully there are soem things that can be learned from thise incident and it doesn’t just get chalked up to another day on the job.