Construction companies fined over worker's six-metre fall

Date:

11 December 2012

Release No:

HSE/M/192/12

Two construction companies have been fined for serious safety failings after a Coventry worker suffered life-changing injuries after plummeting more than six metres through a badly-covered hole in a floor.

Contract worker Ian Howells, 33, of Tile Hill, punctured his lung, broke every rib on the left hand side of his body, shattered all the bones in his left hand and fractured his pelvis in three places as he stepped onto what he thought was a pile of wood covered by plastic.

He was bedridden for two months and was unable to work for a year after the incident on 26 November 2010 at a fifth floor plant room undergoing construction at Edgbaston cricket ground. He still suffers considerable pain, walks with a limp and has not regained full use of his hand.

Birmingham Magistrates' Court heard yesterday (10 December) that he and a colleague were trying to move a heavy floor grinder when he stepped onto the wood. He was unaware it was a polythene covered pallet placed on top of scaffolding that concealed a service void. The pallet snapped and sent him crashing to the fourth floor below.

The fall was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which found that Parkstone Group Limited and Galliford Try Construction Limited, the principal contractor for the construction project, could and should have done more to prevent it.

Neither company had properly assessed the risks or devised a safe system of work for moving the floor grinder.

HSE identified that no information had been provided to anyone working on site in relation to the risks posed by covered voids, and there was no signage affixed to the void to highlight the potential danger.

There was also no safe access to the room where work needed to be undertaken. Workers had to access the fifth floor by pulling themselves through the void and then a gap between a scaffolding guard rail.

Parkstone Group Limited, of Stonebridge Road, Coleshill, West Midlands, and Galliford Try Construction, of Cowley, Uxbridge, Middlesex, both pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

Yesterday (Monday 10 December) the companies were each fined £13,500 and ordered to pay £3,345 costs.

After the hearing HSE inspector Paul Thompson said:

"This incident was entirely preventable. The system of work adopted by Galliford Try and Parkstone Group was unplanned and unsafe. Workers were not provided with a safe means by which to do their jobs, or the right equipment to help them do it.

"The hole in the floor had been covered with a polythene-covered pallet to prevent rain from getting in, but it was not obvious that it was concealing a hidden danger and individuals at work were not informed of this.

"As a result Mr Howells has suffered life-changing injuries that he will never fully recover from."

Further information about working safely at height can be found online at www.hse.gov.uk/falls

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce 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. Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: "It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety."

Press enquiries

Regional reporters should call the appropriate Regional News Network press office.

Issued on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive by the Regional News Network