Mobile Towers

What makes a tower mobile

Mobile towers run on castors locked into the base of the standards – wheels of not less than 125 mm diameter, fitted with brakes that cannot be released accidentally. Joints in the standards should only be made with sleeve or parallel couplers, and the working platform needs guard rails and toe boards on all four sides, with toe boards rising at least 150 mm above platform level.

Most towers on site today are proprietary aluminium systems rather than tube-and-fitting builds, assembled by trained users following the manufacturer’s method – the industry-standard training for this is the PASMA course, and many principal contractors won’t let an untrained operative near a tower. For tube-and-fitting towers, the requirements sit alongside those for static scaffold towers – same geometry rules, plus wheels.

The rules that prevent tip-overs

Almost every tower incident traces to the same short list: moving the tower with people or materials still on it, riding a tower while it’s pushed, exceeding the safe height-to-base ratio without outriggers or ties, wheels left unbraked, and climbing the outside of the frame instead of the built-in ladder access. The fixes are all procedural and all free – brakes on before anyone climbs, everyone and everything off before it moves, and access only through the platform trapdoor.

Ground and gradient

Castors concentrate the whole tower’s weight onto four small contact points, so ground condition matters more, not less, than for a fixed scaffold. Firm, level surfaces only; never rely on the brakes to hold a tower on a slope; and check the route before rolling – a wheel dropping into a drain cover recess has put more than one tower on its side.

The pre-use check that takes two minutes

Before anyone climbs, a competent user walks the tower: brakes locked on all castors; the structure vertical and square; all frames, braces and platforms present and clipped; guardrails and toe boards complete on all four sides; the trapdoor closing properly; and outriggers or stabilisers deployed if the height demands them. Two minutes, every repositioning, every shift start. Most tower incidents would have been prevented by exactly this check – and after any alteration or a spell of bad weather, the fuller inspection regime from our scaffolding safety guide applies to towers just as it does to fixed scaffolds.

Moving a tower without drama

The moving rules are short and absolute. Everyone off. Everything off – tools, materials, the lot, because anything left on the platform raises the centre of gravity and becomes a missile if the tower snags. Reduce the height first if the manufacturer’s instructions require it. Push from the base, never pull from above, and only ever on the firm, level, obstacle-checked route you walked first. Watch for overhead services – an aluminium tower meeting a live cable is the other classic tower fatality, and it’s why site rules often ban moving towers anywhere near overhead lines. Brakes back on before anyone so much as touches a rung.

The insurance angle

Towers appear in claims out of all proportion to their size, precisely because they’re quick, familiar and often used by non-scaffolders. If your teams use towers, make sure your policy reflects it, keep training records current, and treat the pre-use check as non-negotiable. Tower work still counts as work at height under the same regulations that govern full scaffolds – the structure is smaller, the legal duties aren’t.

Mobile tower FAQs