LOLER on construction sites: telehandlers, excavators, and hoists

Quick answer. On a construction site, LOLER applies to any plant used for lifting or lowering loads: telehandlers, mobile cranes, tower cranes, site hoists, MEWPs, and excavators when used to lift suspended loads. Thorough examination intervals: 12 months for most lifting plant, 6 months for lifting accessories and for anything lifting people (MEWPs, passenger hoists). Excavators used for object handling need thorough examination as lifting equipment. Principal contractors increasingly refuse plant on site without a current report.

Construction concentrates more LOLER-relevant equipment in one place than any other sector, and adds a complication most sectors avoid: the same machine can be inside or outside LOLER depending on what it is doing that day.

The excavator question

An excavator digging is not lifting equipment. The same excavator lifting a pipe into a trench on chains is. HSE's long-standing position: excavators used for object handling (lifting suspended loads as part of their work) are lifting equipment for that operation and need to satisfy LOLER, including thorough examination.

Practical consequences:

• An excavator that ever lifts suspended loads should be thoroughly examined as lifting equipment on the 12-month cycle, with its lifting-point capacity documented.
• The lifting accessories used with it (chains, shackles, hooks on the quick hitch) are on the 6-month accessory cycle.
• The machine's rated lifting capacity with each configuration must be established; an excavator's safe lifting duty differs from its digging duty and varies with reach.

The failure pattern inspectors find: a site where "the 360 never lifts", except everyone has seen it lift, and the machine has never had a lifting-equipment examination.

Interval map for common construction plant

• Telehandlers: 12 months as lifting equipment; 6 months if fitted with a man basket (it is then lifting people). Forks and attachments are accessories on 6 months.
• Mobile and tower cranes: 12 months, plus thorough examination after erection or significant configuration change (Regulation 9's after-assembly trigger bites every time a tower crane is erected).
• Site hoists: 6 months if passengers are carried, 12 months goods-only.
• MEWPs: 6 months, they lift people.
• Lifting accessories (chains, slings, shackles, eyebolts, lifting beams): 6 months, wherever they are used.
• Gin wheels, pulley blocks, winches: lifting equipment, 12 months; their ropes and hooks, 6.

Every interval above is the Regulation 9 default; a written scheme of examination can vary any of them where a competent person justifies it, and hire fleets commonly run schemes.

Hired plant: who holds the duty

Most construction lifting plant is hired, and hire splits the obligations:

• The hirer (owner) normally supplies the machine with a current report of thorough examination, and contract terms usually keep the periodic examination with them.
• The user (site) must check the report exists and is current before use, ensure examinations falling due during a long hire happen, and handle the after-assembly examinations for anything erected on site.

"The hire company deals with LOLER" is half true and fully dangerous. The duty to ensure equipment in your undertaking's use is examined sits with the user too. When a hired telehandler's report expires mid-project and nobody noticed, both parties have a problem, but the site using it has the immediate one.

What principal contractors check at the gate

Larger sites have converged on a standard gate posture for lifting plant and accessories:

1. Current report of thorough examination for the machine, in date, matching the serial number on the chassis.
2. Reports for accessories, individually identified; colour-coded tags evidencing the current inspection period are common but the tag is not the report.
3. Operator competence evidence (CPCS/NPORS card appropriate to the machine).
4. For cranes and complex lifts: the lift plan and the appointed person's details, per L113's organisation-of-lifting-operations expectations.

Subcontractors who arrive able to show reports per asset in seconds clear the gate. Those who arrive with a folder of unsorted PDFs from three hire companies do not, and site standdowns cost more than any examination ever did.

Where Hovermarks fits

Hovermarks gives every machine and accessory a QR-tagged identity carrying its current report, next-due date, and defect history, so a gate check or an HSE visit is answered by a scan, across owned and hired plant alike. The LOLER solution page shows the workflow; the LOLER inspection guide has the full resource set, including record keeping and crane intervals in detail.