Raising Safety Awareness with Aerial Scissor Lifts
While scissor lifts are known by many different names – aerial lifts, self-powered scaffolding, elevated work platforms, and so on — they serve the one purpose of raising personnel up to perform work overhead. Plumbers, electricians, camera operators, welders, and many more professionals use scissor lifts in their daily work, and the work itself can be just as varied. No matter the application or industry, scissor lifts are a staple equipment piece that operators rely on to keep them safe as they go about their day. To help operators build up their safety acumen further, we’d like to share a number of core scissor lift safety considerations and best practices below.
The Core Tenants of Scissor Lift Safety
All companies that utilize scissor lifts must have an established scissor lift safety program that includes the below main topics:
- OSHA Compliance – As with all material handling vehicles and equipment, operating scissor lifts safely begins with thoroughly understanding and adhering to OSHA’s safety standards.
- Understand Lift Capacity – Scissor lifts are primarily designed to lift personnel to elevated working heights, not materials or tooling. With that said, workers are allowed to take up limited amounts of tools and materials when they fully fit within the scissor lift basket, and do not exceed the lift’s total weight capacity (combined with personnel weights). Overloading a lift makes it top-heavy, and over-hanging materials change its center of gravity, both factors greatly increasing the risk of a tip-over.
- Perform Daily Inspections – Scissor lift accidents typically occur in three ways: scissor mechanism collapse, tipping over while in motion, or tipping over while stationary. Preventing these types of accidents starts with a daily pre-shift inspection, checking tires, controls, safety devices, and hydraulics for good operation. Operators should follow a pre-shift checklist during these inspections, and upon finding any concerns whatsoever, tag the lift out for service.
- Obey Traffic Rules – Warehouse and work site traffic rules exist for a reason, and scissor lifts must follow these rules just like any other vehicle. In general, scissor lifts must respect all speed limits, travel directions, pedestrian crossings, stop signs, and yield signs. In addition, most sites will have specific rules applicable to scissor lifts, such as travel height restrictions and wearing safety harnesses during transit. When scissor lifts are set up for use at their work location, warning signage and spotters are often required to alert passersby.
- Always Consider Stability – Scissor lifts are especially sensitive to changes in their center of gravity, making stability the single greatest operating variable in play. Lifts should only be raised on flat, level surfaces, always minding the lift’s tilt alarm. Once raised, the platform must stay centered over the base to maintain a stable center of gravity. Abrupt operator movements, catching on an obstruction, and vehicle impacts can suddenly shift the lift’s center of gravity, leading to a tip over. Also, if a lift has outriggers, use them!
- Use Proper PPE – Scissor lift operators must always use appropriate fall protection, hardhats, eye protection, hearing protection, and any other PPE required by the job at hand. In addition, personnel working or passing below must also be protected from potential falling objects dropped from the scissor lift. Regarding fall protection, determining the correct harness, lanyard length, and clip-off points are extremely important with scissor lifts, given the added risk of a falling person’s momentum causing a tip-over.
- Complete Training – Training operators on scissor lift safety is a specialized and nuanced process. At minimum, scissor lift operators must be fully trained, tested, and certified on all the topics covered in this article, as well as on advanced topics including recovery from near-miss scenarios and awareness of external hazards. When an operator is switched to a new lift style, they should receive retraining and recertification for that new lift.
- Ensure Thorough Maintenance – Proper scissor lift maintenance is equally as important as proper operation. If a problem is found during daily inspections, the lift should be immediately serviced and formally evaluated before being returned to use. In addition, regular routine maintenance is just as necessary, which should include testing of all safety and operational systems, operator controls, guardrails, safety gates, brakes, tires, hydraulic lines, beacons, lights, horns, and any special accessories.
For more information, readers are encouraged to look up additional technical safety information under ANSI A92.3 Manually Propelled Elevating Aerial Platforms and A92.6 Self-Propelled Elevating Work Platforms standards.
Scissor Lift Safety Best Practices
Across all the work we do with our many material handling, manufacturing, logistics, event, and construction customers, we’ve come to appreciate that the safest equipment operators come from companies with deeply embedded safety cultures. In true safety cultures, employees at all levels of the organization employ proactive safety best practices designed to protect themselves and their colleagues, such as:
- Survey the Operating Environment – in nearly all cases, the most dependable way to avoid an accident with scissor lifts is to spot, eliminate, and avoid hazards before the work even begins. For every new project or work environment, operators should thoroughly survey their surroundings for the big three risk factors: unsuitable surfaces (such as loose gravel), overhead obstructions (including power lines), and ground traffic hazards (such as blind corners).
- Implement Traffic Controls – no matter how quick or remote the job may be, the best way to mitigate traffic hazards is to implement traffic controls around a scissor lift. This can include warning signage, safety cones, work lighting, and even the use of a flagger – all of which meant to catch the attention of passing vehicles that could otherwise strike the lift. In heavy traffic zones or near public roadways, physical barriers are also recommended.
- Use Mock Scenarios during Training – training for safety is just as much about responding to hazards as it is about avoiding them, and for this reason, scissor lift operators must be provided opportunities to practice recovery scenarios in controlled environments. This should include traveling at height (where allowed), manual platform lowering (when hydraulics fail), responding to power losses, and even suspended harness recovery.
- Operate Defensively – even though it may sound pessimistic, the right mentality to have when operating any industrial equipment is that an accident is always imminent unless we make conscious, active decisions to avoid them. With a defensive mentality like this, operators should view every potential hazard as a threat that they have to mitigate, solve for, work around, or otherwise avoid, leading to greater levels of safety awareness.
- Two-Party Responsibility – we believe that no matter how small or quick the task at hand is, two qualified people should be involved to ensure that the work occurs safely. With this mindset, scissor lift operators should always engage a second person to back them up – this can take the form of a supervisor approving their work plan, a spotter watching while the lift is raised, a maintenance engineer confirming that they’re using the right lift, or a conversation with the nearby fork lift operator to make sure they keep an eye out.
- Four Dimensions of Awareness – this one is easy: operators should always consider that conditions change over time, and so before starting a task with a scissor lift, must fully look for hazards in every direction around the lift’s travel path plus what new hazards might arise later in the day. Passing vehicles, pedestrian groups during shift change, even heat from the rising sun are all examples of hazards that can emerge across the fourth dimension of time.