The crew practised rescuing a worker from the top of the tower crane on Ocon Construction’s central Liverpool construction site, Vine Court, on Saturday morning.
The £34 million Vine Court project will see Ocon construct a 710-unit student accommodation scheme for the University of Liverpool, which will also include a 250-seat restaurant, cafe and retail units. Ocon Construction involved their sub contractor, MPB, a specialist concrete frame contractor and Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service’s Search & Rescue Team arranged the exercise on the crane to practice in a realistic scenario.
It also gave the crew, the opportunity to work closely with the HART (Hazardous Area Response Team) paramedics who have recently joined them at Croxteth Community Fire Station.
Watch Manager Steve Thomas of the Search & Rescue Team at Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service said: “The exercise was a valuable opportunity to practice our rope rescue procedures and also to carry out realistic joint-agency training with our colleagues from the North West HART team at an off-site location.”
Explains Ocon’s senior project manager, Mike Jones: “Working at height is one of the biggest health & safety risks on a building site and Ocon works hard to ensure that health & safety is always front of mind with both our own personnel and our sub contractors. We requested a similar exercise on a previous site in Dundee and found it very useful.”
A dummy was placed in the crane’s cab and the fire crew ascended to the cab with a specialist rig, rescuing the dummy and lowering it down to safety. In addition to providing a valuable on-site training opportunity for Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service, the exercise will also form the basis of a ‘toolbox talk’ health & safety training session for Ocon and MPB.
Mike adds: “MPB will be on site until the end of August and we have scheduled the shifts of the crane operators to ensure that risk is minimised and fatigue is never an issue. Ocon will then take over the crane hire and operation so this exercise will be an important training session for the whole team. We’d like to thank Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service for all their help.”
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