IPAF publishes global MEWP safety analysis

IPAF’s Global Safety Report for 2022 has been published. 

The 2022 report, which covers data collated between 2012 to 2021, analyses the main causes of serious injuries and fatalities occurring when using powered access machines to conduct temporary work at height.

This year’s report has an expanded focus on falls from the platform, and also profiles incidents occurring during rental company activities, including delivery or collection of machines, maintenance, cleaning, manoeuvring in depots and loading/unloading of MEWPs.

In 2021, there were 603 reports from 28 countries. There were 628 people involved in these incidents, which resulted in 109 fatalities. This is a reduction in the number of fatalities on the previous year, when there were 126.

The country that submitted the most reports in 2021 was the UK, accounting for 60.8% of the reports received. The US submitted 18.7% of the reports and the Republic of Korea entered 4.9%, which is a significant increase on previous years.

Sector data

The sector from which most incidents were reported was the powered access rental industry with 43%, closely followed by construction with 29% of incidents. Facilities management accounted for just under a tenth of all reports (9.8%).

Reports by machine category show us that the self proppelled boom (type 3b under IPAF’s designation) was the most common type of equipment involved in incidents, accounting for 29% of the reports. After that came vertical mast lifts (3a),  at just under a quarter of reports (23.7%), closely followed by static booms (1b), on 21.5%.

Looking at the three-year data, it shows 1,351 reports from 32 countries involving 1,438 people and resulting in 303 fatalities. Of these reports 60% came from the UK, 22.4% reports were received from the US, with the other countries reporting accounting for only single-digit percentages. In terms of end-use sectors, 38% of all reports were from construction, and 37% entailed ‘rental activity’.

This year, IPAF is able to look back over a full ten-year’s worth of data, as the federation began gathering incident reports in 2012. Data from 2012-2021 indicates 4,374 reports, including 4,462 lost-time incidents (LTIs) of which there were 585 fatalities. There have been 41 countries from which reports have been gathered across the whole ten-year period