The American Rental Association (ARA) has won two separate appeals before the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Board of Standards Review, ultimately forcing the A92 committee to remove all reference and requirements for a Manual of Responsibility (MoR) to be placed on mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs).
This means that owners of MEWPs do not have to maintain any MoR past or present on any MEWP going forward.
“This is a huge victory for the equipment and event rental industry,” says John McClelland, ARA vice president for government affairs and chief economist, as well as the ARA’s main representative on the A92 committee. “Eliminating the MoR requirement will save our industry millions of dollars going forward. In addition, our appeals have established a precedent making it clear that no ANSI committee can make such a requirement without running afoul of ANSI’s commercial terms.”
The ANSI A92 Committee published its standards for MEWPs on Aug. 12, 2020. The suite of standards has been in development since 2010, but they have been delayed due to appeals filed by ARA over the inclusion of an MoR that was initially required to be placed and maintained on each machine.
ARA successfully argued that the MoR was a violation of ANSI’s commercial terms because it was a copyrighted document that was only available from the Scaffolding Access Industry Association (SAIA), which also is the secretariat of the A92 committee.
Information provided by the ARA and edited by Alexis Sheprak.
