IPAF North American Regional Council Chairman Ebbe Christensen Aims to Inspire and Grow Membership

The North American Regional Council (NARC) selected Christensen, president of ReachMaster, to succeed Teresa Kee of United Rentals as chair at its most recent meeting in Miami last March, held in conjunction with the IPAF Summit & IAPAs.

Ebbe Headshot

IPAF North American Regional Council (NARC) Chairman Ebbe Christensen says he sees himself as coach of a team of highly skilled players whose primary goal is to increase membership and awareness of IPAF programs.

“The NARC is like a soccer team, if you will,” he says. “My role as coach is to make sure the team plays well in all positions. My job is to get the whole team playing together, because only then can we get something done.”

He continues, “Growing our membership is the ultimate win, but with so many industry entities out there who should be members, it’s a very ambitious goal. No market is more competitive than North America. It’s a big place, so it’s a big task.”

The North American Regional Council (NARC) selected Christensen, president of ReachMaster, to succeed Teresa Kee of United Rentals as chair at its most recent meeting in Miami last March, held in conjunction with the IPAF Summit & IAPAs.

Tony Groat, IPAF’s North American general manager, who convenes the IPAF NARC, said, “We are very pleased to welcome Ebbe as our new chair; he is a long-time supporter of IPAF and a fierce advocate of safety and training best practice; he will undoubtedly continue to be a force for good and an agent of change in the North American powered access industry as he takes up his new role.”

According to Christensen, the mission of the NARC is, quite simply, to direct IPAF’s global efforts in North America.

“We’re essentially an advisory board to the IPAF global organization,” he explains. “IPAF’s goals are uniform on a global level; we help apply them here in North America.”

He adds, “When you take a generic message and want to make it global, you run into different cultures and legislations. Instead of applying a standard handbook-type approach to all markets, the regional councils take all the principles, info and efforts and convert them to a form and shape that will get better acceptance in North America. As the old saying goes, you should always meet your customer in your customer’s world.”

Getting a sense for it

Christensen says one of his primary objectives for his term as chairman of the NARC is to usher in the long-awaited new ANSI standards, which are in their final round of hearings and should be published this fall.

“One of the most important changes to the standards centers on load sensing technology, which will have a huge impact on the industry. In the past, it was the nature of the beast that machines were able to do more than their official capacity. Under new load sensing requirements, there will no doubt be some confusion because machines will no longer operate if overloaded.”

To help alleviate this confusion, IPAF came up with a sticker, which is currently available at XXXXXXXX, which can be applied to each machine, indicating whether or not it’s equipped with load sensing.

“For a while after the new ANSI standards are enacted, there will be machines in fleets that have load sensing capabilities and machines that don’t, which could easily confuse operators going from machine to machine. There’s definitely going to be some work for the North American Regional Council to do in helping the industry get used to the new standards.”

Getting motivated

Christensen notes that every member of the NARC is an industry stakeholder with a lot of professional responsibilities, a fact that greatly enriches the wisdom of the council but also creates challenges.

“We’d like to have the council’s three Ts: their talent, their time and their treasure. Everyone comes from different branches of the business, bringing their talent and knowledge. We also want their treasure, or money, in that we need everyone to travel to meetings in order to be involved. We want there to be two face-to-face meetings per year, because once we’re together in the same room, we can get more things done. Not everything is easy to discuss over the phone. Once you commit to a meeting in person, you’re committed to those shared objectives.”

With this philosophy in mind, IPAF will introduce a new meeting this fall in the form of a workshop. Slated for Houston in October, the workshop will pinpoint 10 subjects impacting the industry now and into the future. The two-day event will separate participants into work groups focused on each of the 10 subjects, with the goal of achieving an open dialogue and coming up with real solutions to challenges facing the powered access industry. From there, results will be presented and hopefully concrete goals will be established. More information about the workshop will be available in the coming weeks.

The main message

“If I could say one thing to our North American membership and potential members, it would be: Get involved,” Christensen says. “We have so much going on in the industry right now and there are a lot of gray areas, but our main mission, which transcends everything we do, is to get people home safely at the end of the day. For that to happen, everyone needs to get involved and participate on a local level.

“I hope we can inspire more people to get involved,” he concludes. “There is still so much that can be improved.”

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