THE ePAL mobile app for operators of mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) and mast-climbing work platforms (MCWPs) from the International Powered Access Federation (IPAF) has surpassed a quarter of a million downloads.
The ePAL app was launched in June 2021, with the global roll-out completed earlier this year. The app allows digital certification of training, including IPAF’s Powered Access Licence (PAL) card. It is free to use and available in seven languages.
The app enables IPAF to communicate safety messages to operators, while users can store and share training certification, log machine time, and report incidents or near-misses to IPAF’s portal.
To date, the app has active users in more than 160 countries.
Peter Douglas, IPAF’s CEO and MD, said, “We developed ePAL in partnership with our member firm Trackunit in part to offer operators and supervisors a digital tool to share training certification and log equipment time, and also as part of our ongoing digitalisation project. We are streamlining processing of IPAF licences and have significantly reduced the carbon footprint involved in sending hundreds of thousands of plastic PAL cards and paper certificates all around the globe each year.
“We have been rolling the app out since mid-2021, and while the emphasis was on newly certified training candidates in the first few months, take-up has snowballed and now it is encouraging to see that ePAL is being downloaded by ever increasing numbers of people around the world.”
