Is it a lift or a hoist? The answer changes who carries the risk

Whether the thing in your building is a lift or a hoist is not a naming argument. It decides which standard it was designed to, whether its design had to be registered, and who carries the risk when somebody is hurt on it.

The confusion is built into the words

In everyday use, people say hoist, lift, platform lift, stacker and vehicle hoist more or less interchangeably. The Work Health and Safety Regulation does not. It defines hoists, lifts, mast climbing work platforms, materials hoists, temporary work platforms and vehicle hoists separately, and it treats lifts, escalators and moving walks as high risk plant.

That classification carries consequences. Registered plant and registered plant designs have their own duties. Lifts, escalators and moving walkways require design registration. So do hoists with a platform movement over 2.4 metres that are designed to lift people, and so do vehicle hoists. Different items, different pathways, different paperwork.

The practical dividing line

A lift is permanently installed in or attached to a structure, moves people or goods on a fixed path within a car, cage or platform, and includes the well, the entrances, the machinery and the supporting structure. Low rise platform lifts and hold-to-run passenger lifts within defined travel and speed limits sit inside that definition. Dumbwaiters that only carry goods, false cars used to install lifts, stage machinery, amusement devices, mine winders and elevating work platforms sit outside it.

A hoist raises or lowers a load or people, and the ones designed to carry people tend to be temporary, industrial, or tied to a specific work task. Personnel hoists and mast climbing work platforms on a construction site. Lifting appliances built into machinery so somebody can reach a workstation. Goods hoists serving two levels where an authorised person rides with the load. Movable wheelchair hoists giving temporary access at very low speed.

The line that matters most: hoists are not suitable for raising or lowering members of the public, including in residences. If the public will use it unsupervised, it should have been designed as a lift.

Where we see it go wrong

Car stackers sold as parking, delivered as plant. A vehicle stacker is designed to stack vehicles with nobody in the car and nobody on the platform. That is the design assumption the safety systems are built around. The moment residents are riding stackers, or standing on a platform to load, the assumption is broken and the risk assessment behind the design no longer describes what is happening.

Vehicle hoists doing double duty. A vehicle hoist is designed to raise a single unoccupied vehicle so somebody can work under it. In New South Wales, the regulated design guidance is direct about vehicle lifts capable of carrying passengers: they need safety systems in accordance with the lift standard. If a driver stays in the vehicle, or rides the platform between levels, you are no longer looking at a vehicle hoist in the sense the designer meant.

Platform lifts in small residential buildings. These get specified late, priced against a hoist, and installed where the public will use them. The travel, the speed and the platform area all matter to the classification, and they are the first things to change during value management.

Goods hoists that quietly start carrying people. A hoist serving two levels for goods, with an authorised operator, is a defined thing. A hoist that staff have started riding because it is quicker than the stairs is a different thing entirely, and nothing about the equipment changed.

Why it lands on the owner

Design registration attaches to the design. Plant registration and the duty to manage risk attach to the person with management or control of the plant at the workplace, which in most buildings is the owner or the manager acting for them. If the equipment was designed and registered as one thing and is being used as another, the gap is not the manufacturer’s to close after the fact.

The standards give the practical guidance the regulation does not spell out. Lifts, escalators and moving walks sit under the AS 1735 series. Hoists sit under the AS 1418 series. Two different families of design assumptions, and the wrong one is not made right by a compliance plate.

What to do about it

Take an inventory of everything in the building that lifts a person or a vehicle. For each item, find the design registration and read what it was registered as. Then compare that to how the thing is actually used on a Tuesday afternoon. Where those two do not match, you have either a change of use to control or a design question to put to a competent person.

It is a half-day exercise on most buildings and it is the cheapest risk work available to an owner. The alternative is finding out during an investigation.

The Australian Elevator Association sets out industry definitions for these items in its Industry Position Paper IPP-03, Lifts, Hoists, Vehicle Hoists and Car Stackers, which was amended after comment from SafeWork. The reading of it here is ours.

General information only. Classification questions turn on the specific equipment and how it is used, and are worth checking properly rather than by analogy.