Safety professionals

The professional approach

IPAF’S NEWEST MEMBERSHIP CATEGORY IS AIMED AT KEEPING SAFETY PROFESSIONALS AT THE FOREFRONT OF DEVELOPING AND SHARING THE LATEST GUIDANCE ON THE SAFE USE OF POWERED ACCESS. NEIL GERRARD REPORTS

If health and safety managers, supervisors, or other safety professionals need specialist advice, help or guidance on powered access, where do they go to get it? That was the question that prompted the creation of a new IPAF membership category dedicated to safety professionals.

The category, which at £58 a year costs less than IPAF associate membership, offers a range of benefits (see box) but crucial for its very first member, Chris Wraith, is the fact that it offers a “definitive place” for safety professionals to go for powered access guidance.

Wraith has been involved in powered access since the mid-1980s, working for Nationwide Platforms and then IPAF itself, before he became an independent safety consultant.

“I know powered access inside out, but lots of other people who are safety professionals wouldn’t necessarily specialise in it. Being part of this safety professional membership is a great tool, giving them access to a lot more information,” he explains.

Wraith says that being a member means that the rental companies and other users of powered access he works with have the assurance that he is giving them the most up-to-date advice when conducting post-accident inspections or offering project management services. Given his experience in the sector, membership also allows him to sit on a number of different IPAF working groups.

“I am on a working group that is just about to start revising safety standards. If I hadn’t been a member of IPAF, I probably wouldn’t have known about it and been able to influence it,” he says.

“I believe being a safety professional member of IPAF is very good value for money, and a good source of information and comfort should safety professionals have an issue with MEWPs of any kind,” he adds.

Brian Parker, head of safety and technical at IPAF, also highlights the fact that the members are already spread across the globe, despite the category only launching in September 2021. Members so far hail from places such as Singapore, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Mexico and Korea, as well as the UK, with numbers still growing.

Parker says that the new category not only helps to reach safety managers spread across a variety of different sectors and regions to support them in meeting the challenges of their job, but also helps to promote the work that IPAF does on training and safety. And he hopes that members of the new category will feed information back into IPAF’s accident reporting portal, reporting not just major incidents but also near misses, which will ultimately help IPAF to make the powered access sector safer by formulating new advice and training initiatives in the areas where they are needed.

“It’s an individual category and one where members can get personally involved. It’s also great value – you can spend £58 on a meal – and in a lot of cases employers will pay for membership on the member’s behalf,” says Parker.

“This lets members be at the forefront of powered access knowledge, enabling them to do their job. This is about saving lives and improving safety at the coalface by ensuring safety managers have the latest information and guidance to help support their own teams.”

The new category will reach safety managers across a variety of sectors

↘ Member benefits

l Free participation in a specific annual Safety Professionals webinar with leading speakers from the powered access industry l Access to an exclusive LinkedIn group for safety professionals to share knowledge and best practice l Access to the IPAF accident reporting portal members’ dashboard l Tailored specialist safety and technical guidance materials l Discounted subscription for leading H&S publication