IPAF Launches Improved Accident-Reporting Portal

IPAF Launches Improved Accident-Reporting Portal

The International Powered Access Federation has launched its improved worldwide accident reporting portal as part of a major drive to gather the best quality data from around the world.

IPAF will analyze the data to learn ways the industry can improve powered-access safety.

As part of launching the improved www.ipafaccidentreporting.org, IPAF’s free webinar on Sept. 16 gave a detailed look at the latest data and explained how the findings can be used to influence safety campaigns, best practices, technical guidance, and IPAF’s internationally recognized training program.

A recording of the webinar is now available at www.ipaf.org/resources. In it, presenters outline how IPAF's worldwide reporting project already helps reduce accidents through intelligence.

Peter Douglas, CEO & MD of IPAF, gave an overview of IPAF’s accident reporting project www.ipaf.org/accident, which he helped to initiate while a member of the IPAF UK Country Council in 2012. Douglas explained why every IPAF member should be actively engaged in this life-saving intelligence-gathering.

The new IPAF reporting portal makes it easier to report an accident or near miss – near-miss information being “surprisingly useful in preventing more-serious accidents.” It works on multiple devices, allows multiple users per company, and even allows users to register subsidiary companies.

This allows access, reporting, and analysis across a group of companies in one or more countries, linked to one parent company. That lets firms compile their own company or group safety analysis while creating an anonymous, up-to-the-minute database for real-time analysis by IPAF experts.

The new portal launches in English but IPAF will add languages through the rest of 2020.

The old portal is available until the end of 2020, but IPAF encourages anyone wishing to report an accident or near miss to use the new portal right away.

The webinar also reviewed IPAF’s Global MEWP Safety Report 2016-2018, which presents key findings from 25 countries around the globe. All information gleaned through the project from its beginning in 2012 has been used to create safety awareness campaigns and inform the likes of the UK Health & Safety Executive and ongoing All Party Parliamentary Group inquiry into safety at height in the workplace.

Brian Parker, set to join IPAF next as the organization’s new head of safety and technical and as a key part of IPAF’s Accident Project Work Group, looked in depth at anonymized and previously unpublished data including the latest statistics for 2019.

Deciding purely to focus on the data reported by IPAF’s UK members, he was able to take a granular look at some of the common underlying causes of accidents, their locations, and the type of industry or activity in which they occurred.

While slightly over 60% of all the data gathered via the reporting project is from the UK, this proportion is decreasing all the time as members in other countries commit to using the portal and updating the project with detailed information about incidents.

Parker explained how data given via the IPAF portal tends to be more detailed and useful than that gleaned from national databases such as OSHA accident reports in the U.S. In fact, much of this third-party data has to be laboriously reviewed and cleaned to make it suitable for use in IPAF’s analysis.

Parker underlined his presentation with a plea for all IPAF members to engage with the newly redesigned reporting portal in order for IPAF to gather the best quality data and produce the most usable reports possible.

As an example, he outlined how information relating to accidents leading to injuries and deaths involving delivery drivers showed these almost always come during loading or unloading.

Accordingly, IPAF plans to overhaul its Load/Unload Training course for 2021, as it did with MEWPs for Managers training last year after statistics showed many accidents could be traced to poor planning or oversight.

Douglas added: “Since taking up post as CEO, it has been a key objective of mine to lend renewed impetus to the IPAF global incident reporting project. I’m pleased that increasing numbers of members around the world see the benefits of feeding into this. I’m confident the new portal’s layout and added functionality will only increase take-up.” 

Recordings of all IPAF safety webinars, including the recent Reducing Accidents Through Intelligence, are available for free review online at www.ipaf.org/resources.

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