A MEWP is not an earthmoving machine. It is equipment for lifting people, and everything follows from that: the checks, the training, the legal duties, and the nature of the accidents. What you learned on an excavator does not transfer — the step that matters most here exists on no excavator.
Your manufacturer’s manual prevails. This page gives the order of the steps and what is specific to this family; every figure — capacity, permissible wind speed, approach distances, maximum slope — must be read in your own manual.
1. On delivery, before you sign
- Full walk-around before signing: structure, rams, hoses, tyres or tracks, platform, guardrails.
- The load chart must be present and legible. Without it nobody knows what the machine is allowed to carry — and it is the first thing an inspection looks at.
- Ask for the last thorough examination report and the maintenance logbook. On a used or hired machine, that is the document saying whether it is allowed to work at all.
- Check the access gate: it must close by itself and stay closed.
- Check the platform’s anchor points, if your manual requires a harness.
- Photographs, truck in frame.
2. Unloading
A MEWP is tall and narrow: its centre of gravity makes it more sensitive to side slope than an earthmoving machine of comparable weight.
- Firm, level ground, away from edges and excavations.
- Never correct your line on the ramps: come back down, line up, go again.
- Platform stowed and low, boom retracted.
- Lash to the points the manufacturer marks — the manual identifies them. A point chosen by eye bends the structure.
3. The check before every shift
This is THE step of this family, and it has no equivalent on an excavator. It is not done once “at handover”: before every day of use, and at every change of operator. Both manufacturers consulted word it the same way.
It comes in two parts.
The walk-around, engine off: levels and leaks, tyres, hose condition, structure free of cracks or deformation, guardrails and gate, safety decals present and legible — they carry the limits nobody remembers by heart.
The function test, from the ground controls, with the platform empty:
- every function responds, in both directions;
- the emergency stop really does kill everything;
- limit switches and tilt cut-outs react;
- the manual emergency lowering works — and you know where it is.
Locate the emergency lowering before you go up, not after. It is what brings you back down if the machine stops at height, and it is operated from the ground: somebody has to know where it is and how to use it.
4. Before raising
- Machine level. If it has outriggers, all four must be firmly down before the boom moves.
- Load-bearing ground: no recent excavation, no service cover, no slab whose strength you do not know. A MEWP concentrates its weight on four feet.
- Load and number of occupants within the chart — tools and materials included.
- Wind. Above the limit in your manual, you do not raise. And nothing gets added to the platform that increases its wind area: a board, a sheet, a panel, and the machine becomes a sail.
The tilt alarm is not a spirit level. It sounds when the slope is already severe — it warns of danger, it does not measure a gradient. When it sounds, come down and re-level.
5. What kills
Power lines. This is the leading cause of fatal accidents on these machines. A minimum approach distance applies, it grows with the voltage, and it must allow for the line swaying and for wind. Your manual carries the table; when in doubt, have the supply isolated.
If the machine touches a live line: nobody approaches. Not on the ground, not in the platform — nobody touches the machine or its controls until the line is isolated.
Tip-over. Side slope, an outrigger sinking, an overloaded platform, travelling elevated where it is forbidden. Many MEWPs prohibit any travel with the boom raised: the manual says so, and that prohibition is not negotiable.
Crushing at height. You raise while looking upwards: roof structure, cable, eaves. An operator trapped between the guardrail and an obstacle can no longer reach the controls.
Falls. Where the manual requires a harness, it clips to the platform anchor point, never to an outside structure. And you do not stand on the guardrails to gain another half metre.
6. Statutory duties
Rules below are French, given as a worked example. In France a MEWP is lifting equipment for people: a thorough examination every six months is required (order of 1 March 2004), by a competent person, with the report kept. That is a far tighter cycle than for site plant — and it is what surprises new owners most. Most countries impose a comparable regime; check yours.
On operation, France uses CACES R486, split by type: category A for vertical elevation (scissors, vertical mast), category B for multi-directional elevation (articulated, telescopic), category C for non-productive movement — loading, unloading, driving.
A certificate does not authorise anyone to operate: it attests competence. What authorises is the authorisation to operate issued by the employer (article R.4323-56 of the Labour Code), after a medical check, verification of knowledge and familiarity with the site.
Next
What keeps a MEWP working and compliant: the check before every shift, the thorough examination kept up to date, and service intervals respected.