07.06.2010

HWS promotes harness use

A leading Dutch based access rental company HWS Verhuur, has launched a new programme to provide and promote the greater use of harnesses and short lanyards when working from boom lifts.

The company recently joined the International Powered Access Federation (IPAF)
and owners Toby van de Kooij and Paul van Boven, were inspired by IPAF’s worldwide campaign to promote the use of full body harnesses. As a result they decided to stimulate their take up in Holland as part of a programme to improve safety when working at height.
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(L-R) Hans van Gameren of H A N S! with Paul van Boven and Toby van de Kooij of HWS and Hans Aarse of IPAF Netherlands.

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The HWS harness warning stickers

In cooperation with H A N S! Hoogwerksystemen HWS has purchased its first batch of 50 harnesses which will be rented out with the company’s boom lifts. The company believes that by promoting the regular use of harnesses it will need to take further deliveries in the very near future.
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The harness kits supplied by H A N S Hoogwerksystemen

A strict internal control system, for the maintenance and inspection of the harnesses has been set up.

HWS is also in the process of establishing an IPAF certified training centre and has purchased a building, opposite its main location in Noordwijk, in order to be able to offer indoor practical training.
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This new building will become an indoor training centre

Vertikal Comment

While this may not sound so impressive if you are based in the UK or USA, where harness usage is virtually mandated or increasingly popular, but it is highly significant in Holland where usage remains very low.

Holland has one of the highest penetration levels for powered access in the world, higher than the UK and probably only second to the USA and Sweden? And yet the attitude towards the wearing of harnesses in boom lifts is somewhere close to third world.

The problem is that many users and suppliers appear to look on the wearing of harnesses as ‘un-macho’ or at best unnecessary. Some of this stems from the thinking that harnesses are intended to catch an operator after he falls overboard, when the real intent to hold him IN the platform after the boom experiences a catapult effect, which can be caused by anything from driving a fully extended lift over potholed ground to it being clipped by a passing truck.

To be fair Holland has a reasonable safety record and operators are not catapulted out of their platforms on a regular basis. Prior to the CE marking of lifts, Dutch regulations required an eight metre drive cut-out which helped reduce the risk somewhat. Operators are also generally more experienced and familiar with self propelled aerial lifts than many other countries.

However catapulting accidents do happen in Holland and a harness and lanyard can easily prevent them. There are few more sad and sickening sights than two dead men on the ground while the boom lift they were driving is not only upright and stable but is totally unaffected by the accident!