Tradesman insurance put to good use over near fatal fall
Posted on July 15th 2009
Gearbox manufacturer, Hansen and Veolia Environmental Services Birmingham (VESB) were jointly fined £214 000, as an engineer trying to replace a gearbox fell 10 metres from a fan at the waste management site.
After sustaining several serious injuries including broken ribs, a punctured lung and a hernia, Paul Smith a HSE inspector commented that the engineer had been lucky to fall onto a pallet of copper pipes and would have ‘certainly died’ had he’d hit the floor. The injured man had been dispatched as a team of four to replace the gearbox in a condenser unit at the incinerator plant, where rubbish is burned to produce power for the national grid.
Missing vital hydraulic equipment the four engineers decided to remove the fan covering the condenser unit by balancing precariously on the blades and rocking it to and fro. Unfortunately when the blades became loose the engineer fell into the wire mesh below that was unable to contain his weight dropping him onto the pallet beneath.
VESB pleaded guilty in the court case of neglecting to monitor the work Hansen engineers had been carrying out and admitted that they had now implemented training to all their managers since the incident. Hansen, on the other hand, was accused of breaching Health and Safety at Work Act by not ensuring its employees safety.
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