Overwatch MEWP Crush Protection System

The OverWatch is a type of crush protection, which are sometimes called secondary guarding. The scissor lift is designed with protection to reduce risk of being crushed against the controls – including an enable trigger on the joystick (deadman switch) and a fixed bar/shroud over the controls.

This sends an infa-red beam of light to measure the operators position. The signal occurs thousands of times every second, so it quickly identifies the operators movements and will activate and stop machine movement when it detects the operator moving outside of the operator zone or if the operator moves suddenly.

Secondary guarding for boom lifts has long been in place to protect operators from entrapment, risk for shear or crush events. In recent years, as shown in the IPAF Global MEWP Safety report, scissor are the primary cause of injury or fatalities when working on MEWPs. Using proven technology to ensure operators are using the machines in line with industry best practice and behaviours will upskill the workforce and competence, making for a safer worksite for everyone.

Rather than providing a solution that the operators become reliant on to prevent harm to themselves, the behavioural lead approach makes the operator better in every aspect of the time working from MEWPs.

On top of the upskilling of operators and backstop of function cut out in a potentially dangerous event to minimise injury to the operator and surrounding person(s), Overwatch features an in built data logger storing in excess of 10,000 machine operations (3-6 months worth of typical operations) providing the ability to download (wirelessly), review and analyse the operators performance and general operating characteristics.

This profiling of the operators will highlight bad practice which may not have lead to an accident to that point but puts them in a higher risk category.

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