Was wondering if anybody could help. We are a building maintenance & heating company which do boiler and central heating installations. At present we strive to always help our engineers when it comes to lifting/moving boilers and radiators. However, there are times when a boiler will need to be installed into a small space such as an airing cupboard and it is not possible to get 2 men into that space to assist with the lifting. I was wondering if anybody knows of any mechanical aids that may help, or has any advice on what they do. The engineers have sack trucks on their vans to enable the boiler/radiators to be taken from their vans into properties, so they do not have to manually lift them. All engineers receive manual handling training, however these is not sufficient alone as alot of these boilers are above somebody's indiviual safe lifting capacity. Any help/advice would be appreciated

KieranD Thanks for your reply. I will definately be looking at your suggestion 1A with regard to looking at a pocketbook. your quote: '2. support this with relevant equipment necessary to avoid undue hazards to engineers', As you can appreciate I am looking for equipment that would do this and this is really why i am posting. Although your comments are helpful I am trying to find others who may know of equipment which would reduce or if possible eliminate the hazards to engineers.

The starting point of ergonomics is allocating tasks between equipment and people. When I worked in the HVAC sector, the variety of sites meant that it is was not possible to standardise this allocation. The ergonomic method of resolving the problems was to educate (not simply 'train') engineers to improve basis mechanical principles so they could resolve 98.5% of problems. For the remainder, the management choice was to decline the contract or to increase costs by sending a professional safety ergonomist to the site to design a solution to control the risks, with the client's agreement. There is plenty of ergonomic literature available indicating how to both allocate tasks between equipment and engineers and how to source relevant equipment and tools. You can find out about them at one of the trade shows on industrial engineering and ergonomics, once you know what to look for.

The device will have undergone quality control checks "as built". If you dismantle and rebuild will you be able to remotely replicate such testing ? If this were anything other than gas safety......