A worked example rather than a named client. It describes how a multi-site MEWP programme is standardised, drawn from over 26 years of lifting equipment engineering experience.
Typical scope: 25 to 40 machines spread across 15 to 25 sites.
An FM provider running maintenance teams across many buildings accumulates powered access equipment one site at a time. A scissor lift bought for one contract, a vertical mast lift inherited with a building, a trailer-mounted unit shared between sites. Each was compliant when it arrived and each is now examined — or not — according to whatever the local site manager arranged. The portfolio-level position is unknown, which becomes a problem the first time a client asks for evidence across the whole contract rather than for one building.
The work starts with finding the plant. A portfolio audit establishes what exists, where it is, who uses it and when it was last examined, which on a first pass is usually a shorter list than the FM provider expects and a longer one than their records show. Everything then moves onto a single six-monthly cycle, with reports delivered in a form the FM provider's own system can consume rather than as loose documents in an inbox.
What the FM provider ends up with is a known inventory, one examination cycle across every site, defects graded on one consistent scale, and the evidence available at portfolio level when a client asks for it rather than assembled in a hurry afterwards.
Why MEWPs go missing in a portfolio
Powered access is bought locally and used occasionally, which is the combination that defeats central records. A machine parked in a plant room for the nine months between uses is not in anyone's eyeline, and the person who bought it has often moved on. Hired units complicate it further: a MEWP on long-term hire sits on the hire company's asset register and on nobody's compliance register, while the duty to have it examined follows whoever is using it.
Six months, including the machines barely touched
Every MEWP is six-monthly, because every MEWP lifts a person. Low usage does not extend the interval — the clock runs on the calendar — and a machine that has stood unused for most of the cycle is often in worse condition than one used weekly, because seals dry out, batteries deteriorate and hydraulic systems sit. A long period standing idle is itself one of the exceptional circumstances that can require an examination in its own right.
One examiner across a portfolio, and why it matters
The value of consolidating is not the scheduling, it is the consistency. Fifteen sites using fifteen local providers produce reports with different defect language, different severity thresholds and different levels of detail, which makes a portfolio view impossible to assemble. The same examiner applying the same severity scale across the whole estate produces data that can be compared — which machines generate defects, which sites run their equipment hardest, where the next failure is likely.
Getting reports into the system rather than into an inbox
An FM provider operating a CAFM system needs the examination record inside it, attached to the asset, with the next due date driving a task. A PDF emailed to a site manager who then leaves the business is how a compliance programme silently stops. Agreeing the delivery format and the asset referencing at the start is unglamorous and is usually the difference between a programme that survives a staff change and one that does not.