Inspection and documentation
 |
| Kim Phelan |
Kim Phelan is a free-lance reporter located in the
April 6, 2005 • Not all acts of youthful folly, careless impulse or hasty neglect are accompanied by the doom of life-long consequences, but any of these human misdemeanors that also involve aerial lift machinery tragically has a greater likelihood of haunting everyone close to the accident for a long, long time.
Rental dealers are no exception. Their responsibility and liability are great, though two recent accidents and subsequent $1 million insurance claims for two different ARA member companies demonstrate the ease of oversight when it comes to following manufacturer, OSHA and ANSI safety requirements for aerial equipment.
Costly both in physical trauma to operators and financial duress to rental dealers and their insurance companies, aerial lift accidents are actually declining in numbers. But insurance claims related to lift equipment still account for 11 percent of claim dollars for ARA Insurance Services, says Risk Management Coordinator Maura Paternoster.
Yet even in the wake of recent high-profile, high-payout claims, the insurability of lift equipment for the rental industry is not at risk in ARA Insurance's program, according to Vice President of Underwriting Steve Zastrow. The company will continue to insure aerial lifts. Paternoster says ARA Insurance is reviewing a variety of safety awareness programs in cooperation with the American Rental Association, including aerial lift accident prevention.
The main message that bobbles to the top in the sea of sad stories, sources indicate, is that equipment inspections protect people, and documentation of inspections protects rental companies.
The No. 1 cause of aerial lift equipment accidents is operator error, according to Al Lageschulte, safety and training manager at Diversified Inspections, a nationwide, third-party inspection firm that examines close to 39,000 pieces of aerial equipment a year. But right on the heels of operator error is some failure or gap related to machine inspection, Lageschulte says.
“Rental is tough,” he says. “And it's a scary business. It's getting harder to keep track of the people who are using your equipment. The rental company takes the machine out to a job, the guy signs the piece of paper, jumps on the machine and goes. He never looks at it. He figures this machine is ready to go. But it was hauled on a truck. What happened between the time it left the rental yard and the time it got to the job site?”
Where to start
Of course, checking equipment starts at the rental yard. A rental company's failure to properly inspect an 80-foot telescopic boom lift resulted in serious injuries for an operator in May 2003, Paternoster says. The final installment on the $1 million out-of-court settlement was paid in January.
The job was installation of windows to a new portion of a commercial building. Working at third- or fourth-story height, the lift operator tried to move the bucket closer to the building but other buildings on the site obstructed his efforts. Instead, says Paternoster, he tried to straighten the boom to a more vertical position, but the controls were not functioning.
His last resort was to extend the boom, at which point a 20-foot section of the extended boom suddenly collapsed, slamming the operator against the interior of the bucket as it sharply dropped. Cause of the collapse was discovered inside the boom where bolts on the chain were not properly attached.
The operator incurred multiple bone breaks in his legs, which required surgeries to implant and remove pins; he also suffered serious back and neck injuries. Besides steep medical expenses, paid initially by Workers' Comp, the operator was not able to work for a year, a major factor that was rolled into the claim.
Investigation revealed that the rental company, which had bought the lift used, had not inspected the equipment according to manufacturer standards. A key component of the guidelines was an annual inspection of the machine with a list of specific functions to check. That inspection should include complete disassembly of the boom and inspection of the chain. The rental dealer failed to do so.
A variety of industry standards for safety inspection and operation are a necessary read for rental dealers with lifts in their inventories, sources say. OSHA regulations are often based on ANSI guidelines. ANSI A92.2 addresses aerial lift safety procedures. The launch pad for just about every lift standard is to follow manufacturer-prescribed inspections and procedures. Lageschulte says when in doubt about the obligations of a rental store, contacting the OEM for direction is the best place to start.
Frequency of inspections is also clearly spelled out, according to Paternoster. She says industry requirements call for regular, three-month (or every 150 hours of usage) inspections, but if equipment is bought used, a thorough inspection is also required before it is placed into rental use. Further, says Paternoster, if a lift has been out of rental rotation and idle for three months, it must be inspected again before re-entering the rental work force.
Preventable disaster
A second rental dealer wound up with a $1 million claim for neglecting to inspect the 40-foot towable boom lift he rented to a homeowner. The machine was purchased used and was not properly inspected before its rental.
The second half of the settlement on the resulting accident that occurred last summer was paid off this February, Paternoster says.
The homeowner's teen-age son picked up the equipment from the rental yard and received safety instruction about extending the lift's outriggers and wearing a safety harness. He then took the lift home and began to operate the machine alone, following none of the safety precautions he had been given.
His failure to extend the outriggers for stabilization should have triggered a safety mechanism that would have prevented the lift from operating. But that safety feature had been disabled, a critical point that would have been discovered and corrected if the rental dealer had done an inspection. The top-heavy lift tipped over, and the boy suffered spinal cord injuries that left him paralyzed from the chest down, according to Paternoster.
ARA Insurance Services settled the claim out of court for $1 million. While the boy had a significant amount of liability in the accident, a judge or jury might have awarded up to 8 times that amount.
ARA Insurance Services settled the claim out of court, but, says Paternoster, in an ideal setting, a judge or jury would see that the boy had a significant amount of liability in the accident.
The deal with documentation
Equipment inspection is vital, says Paternoster, but documentation of inspections done by the rental dealer and/or by a third-party inspector is equally important. She has seen many instances in which inspections were performed but not duly recorded, leaving the rental dealer with no defense when a lift accident occurred.
Job site inspection is paramount, says Lageschulte. Neglect to inspect the work environment can be as detrimental as a machine failure. A job site inspection means:
- Looking above for overhead power lines, tree branches or other obstructions in which the operator could become tangled or hurt.
- Looking at the ground or floor surface for drop-offs, ditches, holes or obstacles that could cause a tip.
- Making sure any dirt surface isn't muddy or soft.
- Essentially assessing the whole area around the lift's radius of operation, checking for anything that could collide with the lift or cause it to tip.
On the job site, three individuals bear this inspection responsibility, Lageschulte says. The job supervisor shoulders the responsibility to ensure the safe working conditions of his workers. The lift operator has a responsibility to check his surroundings, and has the right to refuse to use a lift if he believes dangerous conditions are present.
And thirdly, the rental dealer's delivery man should be trained to inspect a job site when bringing a lift to the site, according to Lageschulte. He recommends that rental delivery drivers take the lift safety courses to become certified lift operators themselves, thus fully qualifying them to recognize unsafe job sites and to offer safety instruction to rental end users.
A former rental operator himself, Lageschulte says that a rental dealer should never hesitate to pull a piece of lift equipment off a job site if he believes the job or the operator creates an unsafe atmosphere.
“It's better to pull it off the job than to have a huge lawsuit after somebody falls off the thing,” he says. “I've pulled boom lifts off of jobs and said, ‘Please go to another place--I don't need your business that bad.'”
Lageschulte also strongly advises at least the annual use of a certified, reputable inspection service for the rental company's aerial lift and crane equipment. Most rental companies don't opt for this, he says, because it's one more expenditure they prefer to do without.
“But it's always good to have another set of eyes on that equipment that you look at everyday,” he says. “Then the rental company has someone to back them up if something happens. They have the paperwork that says someone else inspected the lifts. It looks good, and it helps out quite a bit in the long run.”
