CPD Is Not Training: Rethinking Competence In The LMI Profession
A persistent misunderstanding is undermining how the lifting machinery inspection industry approaches ongoing competence. Continuing Professional Development has quietly come to be treated, by candidates and even some employers, as a training pathway rather than what it actually is — and the distinction is one the profession can no longer afford to blur.
Technology Is Moving Faster Than the Profession’s Assumptions
Lifting machinery has changed markedly over the past two decades. Load-monitoring systems, electronic safety interlocks, and design standards for cranes, forklifts, MEWPs, and telehandlers continue to evolve, and that pace shows no sign of slowing. For any Lifting Machinery Inspector, remaining current with these developments is fundamental to the credibility of every inspection signed off.
Yet an uncomfortable reality sits underneath this: an LMI who has not practised recently in a given equipment field, or who never held a trade background in testing or machinery to begin with, is unlikely to stay current through CPD alone. It is unrealistic to expect a handful of annual CPD hours to lift an inspector to the standard the profession demands. That is not a criticism of CPD — it is a statement of what CPD was designed to do, and what it was never designed to do.
Where the Confusion Sets In
CPD exists to help already-competent, registered professionals keep pace with change.
It is not, and cannot be treated as, training material capable of building competence from the ground up. That responsibility sits elsewhere: with the mentor assigned to a candidate LMI, whose task under the professional board’s registration framework is to develop that candidate through to full competence in their scope of practice.
This is a distinction the industry gets wrong with some regularity, and the consequences of getting it wrong fall in the wrong direction. It is not the CPD presenter’s role to train a candidate LMI to competence — it is the mentor’s. The CPD presenter’s obligation, and the professional board notice requirement they are addressing, is to help registered inspectors stay abreast of industry change, not to substitute for structured mentorship.
A Track Record Worth Learning From
Forklift Safety Testing has presented ECSA-accredited CPD courses since 2013 — initially under the LMI Academy, and independently since — using only qualified tradespersons as presenters. That choice was deliberate: credibility on the equipment itself is non-negotiable when the audience is made up of practising inspectors. Even so, delegates regularly arrive at these courses believing that attendance equates to, or can stand in for, formal scope certification or mentorship training. That confusion is not a failure of any single course; it reflects a gap in how the industry as a whole communicates the purpose of CPD.
Getting the Responsibility Right
The path forward requires each party in the system to own a distinct piece of it. The registered professional is responsible for their own currency in the field — that is a condition of remaining registered, not a service rendered to them by a course provider. The mentor is responsible for developing the candidate LMI to full competence. And the CPD presenter fulfils a narrower, ongoing obligation: helping registered inspectors keep pace with technological and regulatory change, in line with professional board notice requirements.
Until this allocation of responsibility is understood industry-wide, by employers, by mentors, and by candidates themselves — the profession will keep mistaking course attendance for competence. Given what is at stake wherever lifting equipment is put to work, that is a mistake the industry can ill afford to keep making.
Forklift Safety Testing,
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