Personnel lifts and aerial work platforms can cost-effectively extend the range of maintenance departments

— By Thomas A. Westerkamp

Personnel lifts and aerial work platforms have extended the reach of maintenance and engineering departments into areas of facilities once considered inaccessible. A new generation of lifts continues to extend this range, offering departments even greater reach, capacity and safety.

Today, managers and equipment specifiers are under ever-growing pressure to carefully review their personnel lift and platform options, select the appropriate lift for their facilities' needs and get the most from the equipment investment. More often, part of their decision-making process revolves around determining when purchase, lease or rental might be the most appropriate option to carry out the maintenance mission.

Equipment advances
Aerial lifts and work platforms fall into four main categories:

Scissor lifts. These lifts have large work platforms for materials and personnel. A typical platform is 68 inches wide, and the height can extend to 34 feet. Some models offer powered platform extensions that reach out 5 feet over obstacles. Platforms can support 1,250 pounds of combined personnel and material load, and four-wheel mobile units can be moved from the work platform.

Telescoping boom lifts. These lifts have smaller work platforms than scissor lifts but can reach higher, often up to 150 feet, and they can extend to distances of 80 feet. They can rotate like a jib crane, and the operator can maneuver them from an 8-foot work platform.

Articulating-boom lifts. These lifts have the best combination of vertical and horizontal flexibility. The articulated boom is a combination of sections that can move personnel up, over obstacles and behind them for better work positioning in crowded overhead areas. Typical specifications include 36-foot working height, 21-foot horizontal outreach, 500-pound capacity, a jib working range of 147 degrees and 160-degree platform rotation. These lifts have a relatively small footprint, so they can be maneuvered in tight areas fairly well from the work platform.

A variant of the articulated boom lift is a trailer-mounted boom lift, which is towed to a job site behind a work truck. A typical model can extend to a 56-foot work height, reach out to 30 feet, rotate in a 135-degree work range, and support 500 pounds. Hydraulic outriggers on these units have auto-leveling capability for uneven terrain and outrigger footpads for added stability. The unit can be fitted with an optional material-lifting attachment and a fluorescent tube caddy.

Vertical work platforms. These platforms can be moved through standard doorways. A typical model has a 34-foot working height, 550- to 750-pound load capacity, a 10-foot reach, and 350-degree rotation. They are most effective where floor space is limited, where maneuverability is important and where light loads such as lamps are involved. Powered units can be operated from the lift platform and carry up to two workers.

The basis of safety
Safety procedures for all types of aerial lifts are of the greatest importance, but the most important safety device for an aerial work platform is a trained user. In the case of safety, initial training and frequent updates are equally important.

Safety training should cover all aspects of lift safety, operation and maintenance, and it should cover daily pre-inspection, proper and close supervision during use and proper put-away procedures that ensure safe use by the next user.

Manufacturers and distributors of aerial lift equipment offer both on-site and off-site training courses that cover all aspects of ownership, including operation, safety, maintenance and financing. Finance issues include renting, leasing and purchasing options, as well as which option is best and how to minimize the tax liability when buying or leasing aerial lift equipment.

Safety goes beyond training, though. Managers must ensure that operating and maintenance manuals are stored on the equipment for easier access and are available at all times.

Also, operators should always use outriggers according to manufacturer recommendations and should never block out any safety devices. Serious accidents have resulted from overriding outrigger safety switches by blocking them and forgetting to unblock them. Another cause of accidents is moving lifts without regard to proper procedures or with personnel on the work platform when this is not recommended for a certain type of lift.

Specifying success
Work platform and lift specifiers should carefully consider how the equipment would be used. This is very important to successful selection and long, useful life. Managers should always visit job sites where workers will use the equipment to get a first-hand look at conditions, obstacles and terrain that exist.

Managers also should get some idea of working heights, loads to be lifted, platform space needed, and the mobility, communication and control issues that workers encounter. Among the other key specification issues to consider when specifying a lift are these:

• Drive. Is manual or powered propulsion required? If it is powered, would two- or four-wheel drive be best?
• Tires. Tires can be solid, foam, non-marking or pneumatic, which are better for rough terrain.
• Power. For self-propelled units, you can choose electric, gas, dual fuel, tri-fuel or diesel. Indoor or outdoor use or both, plus fire hazards, determine whether the equipment is electric-powered, gas or diesel.
• Boom height. Boom heights can be up to 150 feet.
• Reach. A horizontal reach of as much as 80 feet is available by specifying a stick boom.
• Work platform. Typical work platforms are available with rollout extensions, giving an additional 5 feet of work platform.
• Load. Live load, including workers and material of up to 1,250 pounds, can be supported, but most models are in the 500- to 750-pound range.

Among the remaining options are air and AC power to the work platform, a fluorescent tube caddy, material lift to the platform, on-board diagnostics, a tilt sensor and alarm warning, an on-board generator, and a motion alarm.

Ensuring versatility
Aerial lift equipment is expensive and will only deliver the best value and lowest cost if it is fully utilized. For this reason, it is always good policy to select the most versatile equipment for a facility’s or an organization’s particular needs.

While a facility might have one major use, specifiers should always look for other needs the equipment can fulfill, and the more the better. For example, if a lift sits parked for days on end with no useful work being done, a manager might be able to schedule projects more effectively and benefit from renting a unit seasonally and getting lift jobs done all at once.

This approach enables an organization to write off the full rental expense in one year instead of depreciating it over several years. Also, in this case, the rental company does the maintenance on the unit.

By starting out with a rental unit and keeping records of use, a manager can tell when a unit’s usage reaches the point where full utilization occurs. At this optimum point, a manager can review the purchase-rent-lease decision and perhaps switch over to a purchase or longer-term lease. For more on the buy-lease-rent decision, see the accompanying article.

Finally, it also is worthwhile for managers to keep track of situations in which the unit would have been used more if it offered other features. This information will be invaluable when specifying the next aerial lift platform.