Shetland firm fined after worker injured in fall

Date:

21 September 2011

Release No:

SCO/085/11

A Shetland engineering company has been fined after a worker was severely injured when he fell while dismantling a redundant aerial mast.

David Thomson, 22, was working as part of a team removing the mast at the former RAF remote radar head at Unst, Shetland, when the incident happened on 23 August 2010.

Mr Thomson and his colleagues were working from inside the mast and were unbolting pieces of metal and wood and loading them into a telehandler with a bucket attachment, so that they could be safely lowered to the ground.

When they encountered some difficulty unbolting a piece of metal they could not fully reach from inside the mast, the men agreed to stand in the bucket attachment so that they could be lifted up and unbolt the metal from the outside.

They then balanced the piece of metal, which was about four metres long, on the bucket as it was lowered to the ground. But when they were still eight or nine feet off the ground the metal slipped, and a smaller piece of metal caught the back of Mr Thomson's boiler suit, catapulting him out of the bucket to the ground below.

Mr Thomson fractured a vertebrae in his back, broke his left arm in two places, broke his thumbs and received multiple abrasions to his face and neck. He was off work for nine weeks and still has some residual pain in his back.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the incident found that although Ness Engineering Ltd had carried out a risk assessment for the dismantling operation, it was not part of the planned system of work to use the bucket attachment on the telehandler, nor to access the mast from the outside.

HSE Inspector Alan MacKinnon said:

"The bucket attachment on the telehandler was not suitable for transporting people and as soon as Ness Engineering allowed their employees to be lifted up in it, the risk assessment they had carried out became meaningless.

"It was entirely foreseeable that there was a risk of either the men or the metal falling from the bucket, yet the company did nothing to ensure they had the right equipment on site to allow Mr Thomson and his colleague to carry out their work safely."

At Lerwick Sheriff Court today Ness Engineering Ltd, of Stuartfield, Virkie, Shetland pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Etc Act 1974 and was fined £26,700.

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. In Scotland the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has sole responsibility for the raising of criminal proceedings for breaches of health and safety legislation.
3. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Etc Act 1974 states that: "It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees."

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