News / Engineering company fined for safety breach
A SHETLAND engineering firm was fined £26,700 at Lerwick Sheriff Court after admitting breaches in health and safety regulations which led to one of its employees sustaining serious injuries.
Twenty two year old David Thomson, an employee of Ness Engineering, had to be rushed to hospital in Lerwick after being “catapulted” out of the bucket of a telehandler when a lengthy piece of metal they were carrying caught the back shoulder of his boiler suit.
Mr Thomson fell between eight and nine feet to the ground and sustained damage to his vertebrae near the bottom of his shoulder blades, and broken bones in his forearm, as well as a broken thumb.
The accident happened on 23 August 2010 at the top site of the former Royal Air Force Base, at Saxa Vord, on the island of Unst, where Ness Engineering was commissioned to dismantle a redundant aerial mast.
On Wednesday, Ness Engineering pled guilty to a charge of failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare of the company’s employees.
The court heard that a risk assessment had been carried out by managing director Ronnie Leslie, which said that work should be done from inside the mast. Unbolted pieces of metal and wood were to be loaded into a telehandler with a bucket attachment, so that they could be safely lowered to the ground.
But when the four men on site, including Mr Leslie, encountered unforeseen difficulties in removing a four metre long metal section from within the structure, they deviated from the original work plan by using the telehandler to lift up to the area from the outside.
The court heard during a statement by Gavin Callaghan, a senior procurator fiscal depute with the Crown Office’s health and safety division, that Mr Leslie had initially questioned that course of action, but did not prevent his men from going ahead.
Mr Thomson and a second employee were lifted in the bucket and unbolted the section of metal in question.
They balanced the metal on the bucket and were then lowered to the ground. It was then that the piece of metal slipped and caught Mr Thomson’s boiler suit.
The injured man was in hospital for five days and off work for nine weeks. Mr Thomson continues to have residual pain in his back, which is attributed to the damage he sustained to his back. Doctors believe that the pain will improve over time.
Advocate James MacDonald, on behalf of Ness Engineering, told the court that the company and its managing director were “very remorseful” about what happened to Mr Thomson, and deeply regrets the temporary loss “of the usual standard of control”.
He added that Mr Thomson was now back at work and remained on good terms with Ness Engineering.
Sentencing, sheriff Philip Mann told the company that he acknowledged the company’s previous good safety record, but had to nevertheless regard the incident as a “serious breach of health and safety regulations”.
He said the starting point for a fine would have been £40,000 but he was prepared to reduce this due to the company’s early plea by a third to £26,700.
After the court hearing the Health & Safety Executive’s 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.”
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