LOLER, the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations, is the UK regime governing equipment that lifts loads or people: cranes, hoists, chain blocks, and every accessory from slings to shackles. Its signature requirement is the thorough examination, a detailed, scheduled inspection by a competent person, on top of the routine checks maintenance already provides. This is an educational overview, not legal advice.
The distinction trips up plants constantly. Routine pre-use checks and maintenance are what operators and maintainers do, essential, but not a thorough examination. A thorough examination is a systematic, documented assessment by a competent person, often an external examiner, that produces a report of examination with any defects and timescales. It sits alongside the crane inspection and rigging inspection routines, not instead of them: the maintenance program catches the daily and the developing, the thorough examination is the independent statutory verification.
A plant runs 40 lifting accessories, chain slings, webbing slings, shackles, that get pre-use checks but no scheduled thorough examinations, because "they look fine." A LOLER audit asks for the reports of thorough examination. There are none. Beyond the compliance failing, the substance matters: a competent examiner brought in to catch up finds two chain slings stretched past discard limits and a shackle with a mismatched pin, defects the daily glance missed. The fix is quick, the exposure was real, and the report of examination now exists, dated, with the accessory IDs, defects, and verification. The interval requirement is not bureaucracy: accessories fail between pre-use checks, which is exactly what the six-monthly examination is designed to catch.
LOLER is a records regime as much as an inspection one: reports of thorough examination retained, defects tracked to correction within the examiner’s timescales, and every item identifiable so its examination history is unambiguous. The compliance failure is rarely a missing examination in isolation; it is the broken chain from a reported defect to its verified correction, or an accessory nobody can trace to a report.
Fabrico does not perform thorough examinations, competent persons do, often external, and Fabrico does not certify equipment. What Fabrico provides is the LOLER management layer: every lifting item and accessory in the asset register with its examination intervals as recurring work orders, examiner reports attached to the item’s history, defects escalated to corrective work within their timescales, and the finding-to-fix chain and report library ready when the inspector or insurer asks. EU-built, with EU data residency, so the compliance record stays under European governance.
Commonly every 6 months for equipment used to lift people and for lifting accessories, and every 12 months for other lifting equipment, unless an examination scheme drawn up by a competent person specifies different intervals. Exceptional circumstances (overloads, shock loads, modifications, long idle periods) trigger additional examination.
No. Pre-use checks and maintenance are necessary but do not replace the thorough examination by a competent person, which is a distinct statutory duty producing a formal report. LOLER requires both the ongoing checks and the periodic thorough examination.
Yes. Lifting accessories, slings, shackles, eyebolts, spreader beams, are within scope and typically require thorough examination every six months. They fail more often than the cranes above them, which is why the interval for accessories is the tighter one.
Want every crane, hoist, and sling on a LOLER-ready examination schedule with reports attached? Book a Fabrico demo to see lifting-equipment compliance run through a field-ready CMMS.
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