LEEA recently conducted a series of industry consultations as part of the rewriting of AS 1353, the Australian Standard for flat woven webbing slings, writes LEEA’s Justin Boehm.
As part of that process, we engaged broadly across the industry – not just with Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) members, but with external stakeholders, users, and organisations who interact with lifting equipment in very different ways.
During those consultations, a question came up, which on the surface, seemed simple. “Do inspectors really need to pass an eye test?”
For LEEA members working within inspection frameworks, the answer is a straightforward – yes! Australian Standards such as AS 3775 and AS 4497, require inspectors to pass an eyesight test equivalent to Jaeger 1.
The requirement exists for a reason. Inspection is about identifying fine detail – frayed stitching, small cuts, deformation, corrosion, illegible markings, and early signs of failure that are often subtle and easily missed. If you can’t clearly see these issues, you can’t identify them.
For LEEA members, that requirement is understood, a part of the LEEA audit and forms a broader system of training, assessment, and competency that underpins professional inspection services.
What became clear through the consultation process was that this requirement was not universally understood across the wider industry, and that’s where the conversation became more interesting.
This broad consultation highlights what I would describe as a visibility gap in the lifting industry.
The Lifting Equipment Industry define visual capability precisely, where defects are identified (inspections) but not always where decisions are made (operations). Both activities are safety-critical and both rely heavily on vision. Yet only one has it as a consistent requirement.
That inconsistency across roles in the same industry exposes a deeper issue in how we think about assurance within the broader lifting industry.
I saw this play out recently on a building site, where a worker was unloading a pallet of bricks using a vehicle-mounted crane. The sling used was visibly worn, with frayed edges, heavy use, well past the point where it should have been discarded. The load itself was poorly balanced, with the centre of gravity clearly offset.
As the lift came off the deck, a row of bricks shifted and stopping millimetres from falling to the ground and potentially onto the worker operating the crane. There was no clear exclusion zone either. These lifts happen hundreds of times each day.
It was one of those moments where nothing technically “failed.”
The crane operated. The sling held.
The lift was completed.
However, the margin for error was so close, I literally swore while watching.
Close calls like this one, are small in comparison to those performed by many reading this article, and don’t point to a question of whether the equipment was compliant – it clearly wasn’t. The question is why the risk wasn’t identified before the lift even began.
The sling was frayed and well beyond its discard requirements. The load was unbalanced from the second it became airborne. Yet the decision – whether to proceed or not – was a human one. Someone simply chose to go ahead despite the risk.
Like most lifting decisions, it was made with the eyes before it was made with the hands. This is where the visibility gap becomes real. Across lifting operations, we rely heavily on visual judgement: Operators assess distances, monitor load paths, and respond to hand signals.
Riggers inspect equipment, read tags, and verify configurations.
In many cases, the first indication of a problem is visual. Yet, so often workers in control of dangerous situations, STILL say “she’ll be right mate!”
It’s not good enough. Does someone they know need to get seriously injured before they take notice?
We assume that experience compensates and we assume that training is enough.
We assume that if someone has done the job for years, they can see what needs to be seen, but time and time again the best plans are ignored and “she’ll be right mate!” wins out. Most of the time, those assumptions hold. Yet luck runs out. It’s the time when you assume that it makes an “ass out of u and me!”
Vision across a career is not static. It changes over time, degrading gradually, often unnoticed. People adapt. They compensate. They rely on experience to fill in the gaps. Until something gets missed.
This is not about questioning the capability of individuals. In fact, it’s about recognising the limits of even the most experienced operators.
Competence is not just knowledge or experience. It is the ability to consistently interpret real-world conditions accurately, and that starts with what you can see.
What the AS 1353 consultation process highlighted is that LEEA and the Lifting Equipment Industry has been very deliberate in defining vision, so defects are identified, but it’s far less deliberate where decisions are executed in real time. That is a broader industry inconsistency.
In other safety-critical industries, vision is treated differently and apply defined eyesight standards for operators, recognising that visual capability is fundamental to safe performance.
In lifting, we tend to focus heavily on equipment, procedures, and compliance frameworks – which are all critical, but the human input into those systems is not always verified in the same way.
This is where the industry needs to evolve and if we are serious about improving safety outcomes, we need to move beyond equipment compliance and start asking more fundamental questions about capability.
Not just: “Is the equipment tagged?”
But: “Is the person using it capable?”
Because if we’re honest, most incidents don’t begin with catastrophic equipment failure. They begin with something small.
A worn sling that wasn’t questioned.
A load that wasn’t properly balanced.
A detail that wasn’t seen.
The visibility gap doesn’t fail every day, but when it does, it fails fast.
This change doesn’t require a complete overhaul of the industry. In many cases, it starts with recognising that vision is a critical input to safe lifting – not an assumed one.
Baseline vision testing for safety-critical roles is a logical starting point. Periodic checks, aligned with existing medical or competency frameworks, would provide a simple and practical control.
Because at the moment, we have a system where we carefully define what “good vision” looks like for identifying defects, but leave it open to interpretation when it comes to operating equipment and managing risk.
The lifting industry has made significant progress in improving safety, training, and standards. That progress has been built on challenging assumptions and refining how risk is managed.
This is one of those moments.
Because in an industry where the smallest detail can make the biggest difference, we need to be honest about one thing.
We don’t just need to manage risk. We need to be certain we can actually see it.
