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By Dan Hounsell, Senior Editor
September 2025
Inspecting, repairing and maintaining institutional and commercial facilities is difficult enough, given the relentless impact of the elements, the regular infusion of technologically advanced systems, and ongoing staffing issues related to front-line technicians.
The challenges are even greater for many maintenance and engineering managers and their staffs who must access equipment and components located in hard-to reach areas of facilities. These areas include ceiling lights in auditoriums and exterior facades high above paved surfaces to surfaces in the far reaches of facilities that require repainting.
For these departments, mobile elevated work platforms (MEWP) enable technicians to more safely and quickly reach these areas and perform their tasks efficiently.
Building an arsenal
For Ethan Lang, MEWPs are an essential component in his department’s maintenance arsenal.
“Having lifts that are small enough to fit in elevators but capable enough to work at varying heights is incredibly important,” says Lang, who is the director of facilities and engineering at the Baltimore Convention Center. The 1.2-million-square-foot facility hosts conferences, trade shows and meetings and features 31-foot ceilings in its exhibit halls.
“We have three 40-foot one-man lifts, two 35-foot scissor lifts with differing work platform sizes, two electric boom lifts reaching 45 feet, and one gas-powered boom lift reaching 65 feet,” says Lang, whose 24-person department performs all HVAC, refrigeration, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, mechanical and related maintenance work in the building. “We handle all safety inspections and general operating checks. There is a limited amount of repairs that we do in house, and we typically outsource lift maintenance to a third-party vendor, especially on electric equipment.”
A range of factors go into Lang’s decisions on purchasing new lift equipment. For example, some of the most common uses of lift equipment at the Baltimore Convention Center are mainstays of facility maintenance.
“The most common use — exterior and interior — would be lighting,” Lang says. “We still have a significant number of fluorescent fixtures, even on the exterior, and they have a short lifespan when they’re in the elements. Painting is probably number two. The third is ceiling tile replacement, leak repairs and minor HVAC work in ceiling.”
Lift equipment purchases also have to meet the requirements of the technicians who use the equipment.
“My team is incredibly experienced and skilled, so I have to have the type of equipment that enables them to do a little bit of everything,” he says. “In a lot of places, having one manlift and one scissor lift is probably enough, depending on what you outsource. It’s not enough for us. We do a little bit of everything, so I need the one manlift to get into tight spaces and do quick tasks.”
The convention center’s layout and features also affects the choice of lift equipment.
“We’re an event-based industry, so if there’s a bulb out or if there's a ceiling tile that is stained and needs replacing, I need to be able to mobilize quick, get in and out, not have a huge impact, not be driving a big, beeping lift down the hallway,” Lang says. “Also, we get into some more complex repairs when it comes to lighting, electrical and HVAC, so having a larger scissor lift that can be a work platform for multiple people, these are the tasks that drive our decisions.”
Lift equipment also must enable technicians to reach the farthest areas of the convention center’s exterior.
“We’re not working all the way at the top stories from the ground level,” he says. “But when we have lights that are two stories up, having a solid platform that’s all-weather capable like an internal combustion boom lift is a necessity.”
In short, the equipment must satisfy a range of demands, including the ability to operate indoors without interrupting the center’s activities and visitors.
“We need to be able to know that something’s going to start, run and have longevity in the elements but also have the more polished touch of electric equipment inside event spaces,” he says. “I need to be able to use it on one side of a partition wall and the people having their event on the other side have no idea where in they’re doing work.”
While many facilities regularly rely on MEWP rentals to supplement their fleet of in-house equipment, Lang says the only situation in which his department rented a unit arose not because of an equipment need but because of an access challenge created by a facility modernization project.
The convention center updated its elevators in the past two years, including a freight elevator serving the facility top floor.
“The fourth story is our main ballroom, which hosts a ton of different events,” he says. There’s often a need for overhead rigging, audio, visual setups, et cetera. Using scissor lifts on that that level is very regular, and we have a main freight elevator that has a 15,000-pound capacity.
“We’ve modernized seven elevators, the last of which to be done and the most complex was this main freight. The project eliminated our ability to move large equipment from those floors, so we had to rent. We made the decision to rent two scissor lifts just before that elevator went down for modernization. We brought them up to that level, and we have kept them there until that elevator is put back in service.”
Training and safety
Accidents related to powered lift equipment annually land on the list of the top 10 workplace safety violations receiving OSHA citations, so the issue of safety is a high priority for any manager responsible for safety training in maintenance and engineering departments.
“It’s always the biggest thing that we talk about with our teams,” Lang says. “It’s a constant thing is the new employee who’s scared of heights and uncomfortable is going to operate a lot safer than the 30-year vet who’s been doing it every day for his whole career. And that’s when your mistakes happen.
“Complacency is what drives workplace injury and equipment failures. I harp on it and it’s always an uphill battle. Comfort tends to reign supreme. There’s nothing we do every day in this world that’s more important than going home safely, so that focus can never be emphasized enough, especially as you grow in comfort and experience with using something like this. You don’t want to get complacent.”
Lang says one strategy his department uses for safety training is train-the-trainer events.
The training provider “came in and trained two individuals on our staff who are now in a position where they can train all of our employees on safe operation of the equipment both for forklifts and industrial trucks and then aerial lifts,” Lang says. “It creates these designated individuals on site that are the safety czars, if you will. They’re in charge of the process. It’s an added bonus of having those people on site versus having it outsourced somewhere else or within the city government.”
“There is no replacement for practice and experience when it comes to safe operation,” Lang says. “Every experienced lift operator was brand new at one point and regardless of if you have 10 hours or 1,000 hours of operation, safety must always be a priority.”
For Lang, the use of battery-powered lift equipment also offers an example of the way organizations are addressing sustainability considerations in facility operations, including the future of electric vehicles (UV).
“I always find it interesting that there’s somewhat of a pushback from that old school way of thinking when it comes to future electric vehicles and how you’re going to implement them on your site,” Lang says. “The reality is we’ve been using lifts and work platforms for over a decade. Battery-only vehicles are the norm, and that’s what is comfortable and reliable.
“I often use that as a point of comparison for people who are not receptive to having our next fleet vehicle be an electric vehicle. We are operating an EV every day as part of the job and doing it reliably. That’s an unintended parallel you can draw in the modern sustainability realm when it comes to building operation and fleet management.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.