Worker was Fatally Crushed leads to £2,000,000 in fines

A civil engineering contractor and a district heating firm have been fined £1,000,000 each after a worker was fatally crushed.

In December 2015, 36-year-old DB was employed by R K Civil Engineers Ltd working at the EON Renewable Energy Plant in Sheffield. He was one of two workers unloading large heating pipes (12 metres long and weighing approximately 840kg) from a trailer to place them into stillage containers at the site. The pipes were being lifted and moved using an excavator and were incorrectly stacked above the top edge of the stillages. During the positioning of the pipes, two of the pipes rolled off and fell into a gap between two stillages. Mr Beresford was standing within this gap and the second pipe fell onto him.

R K Civil Engineers Ltd (of Manchester) was found guilty of breaching Section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £1,000,000

R K District Heating Ltd (of Sheffield) was found guilty of breaching Section 3 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £1,000,000.

The Judge also ordered that costs of £15,847 are to be repaid; the arrangements will need to be agreed between the two defendants.

According to reports, Companies House records show R K Civil Engineers went into administration in June 2016 while R K District Heating went into liquidation in March 2017.

After the hearing, HSE inspector Mark Welsh commented:

This was a wholly avoidable incident, caused by the failure of both companies to follow safe systems of work, and a failure to identify the risks.

This tragic incident led to the avoidable death of a young man. There was a lack of planning for the work carried out and, as a result, inadequate controls put in place.

A worker was fatally crushed because risks were not properly assessed and suitable safe systems of work were not put into place. Immediately after the incident, the HSE issued two Prohibition Notices. One for the failure to take suitable and sufficient steps, e.g. provide a suitable and sufficient lifting plan drawn up by a competent person and provide appropriate supervision and carry out the lifting of pipes in a safe manner, to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, persons being stuck by the movement/ fall of pipes.  The other issued as they  failed to take suitable and sufficient steps, e.g. not storing pipes above the sides of the stillages and not stacking pipes in an arrangement that does not, remove/reduce unintended movement of the pipes, to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, the fall/collapse/unintended movement of the pipes.