Heating and Ventilating

Carillion has been forced to pay nearly £50,000 for safety breaches after one of its workers suffered 11 broken ribs, a bruised lung and broken femur when he fell down a shaft.
The 18-year-old worker was hurt in a fall at E-ON’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire on October 7, 2007 and has been unable to work since.

Kieran Walker was working as a temporary industrial cleaner for Carillion when he was asked to clean the ducting which supplied air to the boilers. There were two ducts separated by a gap. Neither of the ducts had edge protection in the form of scaffolding or other protective measures and there was a drop of six-and-a-half metres to the grating below.

The cleaner was provided with a harness and given instructions, but no training in how to use it. The cleaner unclipped himself from the girder the harness was secured to but then fell between the gap. He fell six and a half metres down the shaft, which was just over half a metre wide.

Carillion Ltd, of Glasgow, was fined £40,000 and ordered to pay £8,300 costs by Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on Friday October 2, after pleading guilty to breaching regulations 4(1) and 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 for failing to ensure cleaning work was properly planned and supervised, and for failing to take measures to prevent a fall.

HSE inspector Sian Tiernan said: “These shattering injuries can be avoided by sensible and proportionate management of the risks, but sadly that was not done in this case and that lack of action has resulted in a man being unable to work.”