The 39-year-old employee from Barnsley sustained serious crush injuries including a fractured sternum and vertebrae in the incident at a former block works in Shawell, Lutterworth, Leicestershire, on 11 March 2013. He also needed 58 stitches in a head wound.
His employer HCL Equipment Contracts Ltd was prosecuted on Friday by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation identified serious flaws with the dismantling and removal of steelwork that had supported a large aggregate mixer.
Leicester Magistrates’ Court heard how the injured man and a colleague had used ladders to access the top of the 7m-high steelwork. Both men were wearing the wrong type of harnesses and lanyards. They used propane gas cutting equipment to cut the steelwork into pieces, then dropped them through a gap in the centre of the frame into a designated dropping area.
After clearing various parts of the steelwork, the men began to cut through a standing conveyor, with the intention of weakening it so it would fall onto the platform and they could continue the dismantling.
The HSE investigation found that the injured man was finishing a cut made by a colleague when the conveyor began to descend. He was unable to get out of the way of the falling frame, which weighed 380kg, and it struck him.
HSE found that no safe escape route had been planned. The incident could have been prevented with better planning, management and training, it said.
HCL Equipment Contracts Ltd of Cotes Park Industrial Estate, Somercotes, Derbyshire, was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £491 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
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