...dentify himself. The lift, which costs about $180,000, came from Interstate Aerials, a Swedesboro, N.J.-based rental firm. A source at Interstate told ENR it will be up to the contractor to pay for a replacement. “We are basically a middle guy, the same as you would rent a car,” said the rental source, who also would not identify himself.
Even so, driving an AWP from the operator’s basket “is risky,” says J. Robert Harrell, president of San Diego-based Safety Management Services. “The higher the platform, the greater the opportunity for an accident to occur,” he adds.
Loose Standards?
The federal investigation may be completed within as few as 30 days, D’Imperio says. But even if OSHA fines Schopfel’s firm, it may have to use the so-called General Duty Clause because current regulations do not apply to self-propelled lifts, only truck-mounted ones that are not designed to be driven from the platform. That regulation was last updated 40 years ago, safety experts say.
“Everyone has to rely on the industry standards,” says Michael McCann, director of safety research at the Center for Construction Research and Training, a nonprofit union-labor institute in Silver Spring, Md. “It’s a real problem.”
Modern industry standards, such as the American National Standards Institute A92.5, which was last updated in 2006, apply specifically to AWPs. But those standards are written largely by and for manufacturers, McCann claims. He is chairman of a new standards committee called ANSI A10.29, which covers the use of and training for AWPs for the construction trades.
Though it has yet to be published, the new standard already has drawn criticism from other safety groups that believe it is duplicative and could cause confusion down the road. “There is nothing in the safe use of aerial work platforms in construction that would be different to users in any other trade,” says Groat, who opposes the new standard’s adoption. McCann replies that the A92 standards are not specific enough to keep the industry safe. “For example, A92.5 on boom lifts does not discuss entering and leaving a lift at elevations but just refers the user to the manufacturer’s recommendations,” McCann says. “A10.29 has a whole section on recommendations for this.” AWP controls also are not standardized, which can lead to confusion and mistakes when operators are in the air, says McCann. “There have been some accidents where people thought they were going forward, and they went up,” he says.
Groat, a former NES Rentals executive, sits on various A92 committees and notes that manufacturers and rental firms already are required to place a copy of the applicable ANSI standard in a weatherproof box on the platform of each lift, along with an instruction manual. Each booklet costs them $50. With more than 200,000 AWPs in the marketplace today, the costs of following another standard could outweigh the benefits.
“You already have the A92 standard in there. Now, the guy who is using it has to follow both of them,” Groat explains. “So if one is a little bit different than the other, you have this issue of, which one rules?”
Groat says he believes the lift accident in Philadelphia ultimately stems from a training failure already covered in the existing standards. According to these standards, operators must walk their course on the ground before driving their machines from the air. If operators are still unsure, Groat says, “the best practice is to go to your supervisor and say, ‘This thing weighs a lot. If this ground will not hold it, then I know there is going to be a problem.’”
