Lifting and transport industry safety challenges identified

Results of a lifting and transport survey in Europe indicate companies have the right priorities but that more work is needed to reach the highest standards.

The European association of abnormal road transport and mobile cranes (ESTA) surveyed its members in October and November 2025 about safety in the industry. Research was conducted to help provide the basis for the association’s future safety priorities. Data was gathered on how employees across the industry perceive safety in their own organisations.

ESTA is the European association of abnormal road transport and mobile cranes

Areas of focus were identified relating to behaviour towards safety, leadership, communication and learning. The survey’s five main topics were identified as follows:

• safety perception
• safety culture and reporting
• HSE performance and challenges
• expectations from ESTA
• willingness to share and collaborate.

“The survey confirms that the heavy lift and transport sector has a mature and strongly embedded safety culture, with safety widely regarded as a top priority in daily operations,” ESTA said. Overall, those surveyed felt responsible for safety and most felt they had support from leadership, management systems in place and that it was monitored via key performance indicators, reporting and inspections on site.

More work needed

Challenges, however, included the following: human behaviour; workload pressure; changing project environments; and inconsistent communication between contractor and client.

In conclusion ESTA reported, “While most organisations can meet or exceed client HSE requirements, variation in client standards, administrative burden and a lack of harmonisation across Europe continue to create complexity and inefficiency.”

Instead of having more rules and regulation further safety improvements depend more on behaviour, mindset, training, learning and collaboration, the survey found.

Strong support was shown for the practice of sharing accident data and lessons learned. There was a clear desire for harmonised training and standards, and for collective learning. Respondents were confident ESTA was a good platform for collecting and sharing data, including accident reporting.

ESTA’s HSE Commission established a working group for incident sharing and another for safety standards and best practice. Information from these working groups will be published in due course, ESTA said.

Iffet Türken, ESTA HSE Commission chair, thanked the participating individuals and organisations, adding, “The survey provided us with invaluable insight into our members’ safety issues and concerns and will help ESTA determine our priorities in this area.

“It has given us strong foundations on which the ESTA HSE Commission can build in the future,” Türken concluded.