subject: Ipaf Training [print this page] IPAF Training Courses IPAF Training Courses
These days, it can seem like anything and everything requires some kind of training course or health and safety legislation before it becomes a legal activity. In the UK, merely buttering sandwiches for a charity picnic requires a level two certificate in food hygiene training! However, in some situations thorough training is an obvious necessity if workers are to be truly safe working at height is one of those situations.
When working at height, danger is unavoidable. Without the appropriate training, serious injury and death are very real possibilities, for both the person at work and those around or below them. For this reason, all professionally and responsibly run worksites require staff working at height to have training to the standard outlined in the "Working at Height Regulations 2005"; not only is it a matter of working safety, its a matter of working legally. Before being allowed to work onsite, employees hence have to prove they are competent, usually by producing certification from a training organisation to prove they have the adequate training for the job. This training will usually be one of two types; training to use powered access equipment or training to use manual access equipment.
Powered access equipment includes cherry pickers, boom lifts, genie lifts and a wide range of other vertical access platforms, all of which requires a Power Access Licence (PAL) to operate. The most popular way to earn a PAL is by taking an IPAF training course. IPAF, the International Powered Access Federation, is a non-profit organisation, which trains over 80,000 operates every year in accordance with the health and safety legislation that govern the use of powered access platforms. The PAL they issue is valid for five years and is internationally recognised proof of the level of training the bearer has in each piece of powered access equipment they have been trained to use. It also includes a hologram, signature and photograph for security purposes.
IPAF training courses are not, however, actually provided by IPAF. Instead, their role is to approve training centres, which then set their own charges and fees for their courses. These courses are a mixture of theory and practice, normally over one or two days, which IPAF monitor to ensure they are of the required standard. There are over four hundred IPAF-approved training centres worldwide, most of which are in the UK, though course material is available in several different languages.
IPAF also offer a mark of quality, which they award to rental companies which meet certain standards of safety, training and service. The standards for the IPAF Rental+ mark, as it is known, are set by industry experts and companies that have been awarded the mark are audited every year, to ensure standards are maintained.
For both legal and safety reasons, appropriate training is an absolute necessity before using powered access equipment. Staff are not be allowed to work on respectable sites without adequate training and employers who make use of staff without sufficient training are in contravention of the law.
