Friday 22 February 2013

Labourer broke back in 4m fall                                
          

International refurbishment firm MJM Fitout has been prosecuted by the HSE after a worker fell from a poorly constructed scaffold tower while helping to “strip out” a basement gym.
The Romanian national fractured two vertebrae and broke five ribs in the four-metre fall on 19 April 2011.

Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard the workman was one of a team of labourers removing ventilation ducting at the central London gym. He was using a scaffold tower — erected to support the work — to access the ducting from a ceiling when the tower toppled over and crashed to the floor 4.5 metres below.

HSE investigators found the temporary labourers were not competent to erect a scaffold tower, which was constructed without adequate supervision. The district judge was told the incident could have been prevented had the work been properly planned, managed and monitored.
The temporary staff had effectively been left to their own devices and were working in an unplanned and unsafe way, said HSE inspector Keith Levart.

Yesterday (23 January), MJM Fitout was fined £8000 and ordered to pay £3500 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching Regulation 22(1)(a) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations by failing to plan, manage and monitor the construction phase safely.

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