Noel Doyle, 32, from Hammersmith, suffered a shattered right elbow, broken vertebrae, fractured pelvis and ribs, and damage to internal organs when a temporary platform failed at St George Wharf in Vauxhall on 10 February 2009.
He fell almost ten metres from a platform when it gave way during a botched lift, landing on a concrete staircase below.
In June 2013 the concrete subcontractor J Reddington was fined £70,000 plus £22,000 costs.
Yesterday (9 January 2014) its client St George South London Ltd (SGSL), the principal contractor for construction work at the site, was fined £50,000 and ordered to pay £27,386 in costs after pleading guilty to a breach of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007.
Southwark Crown Court heard that on the day of the fall Mr Doyle was helping two colleagues, including a foreman, to raise a temporary work platform inside a concrete shaft to house a stairwell within a building under construction, known as Block A.
The platform was lifted from one floor to another by a crane using four lifting chains before being locked in place in the shaft to enable the next level to be constructed. It had been raised from the fourth to the fifth floor level when the crane operator was inadvertently instructed by the foreman to take the chains away while one of them was still attached. The platform was lifted by only one corner and disintegrated.
Of the three workers standing on the temporary structure at the time, two managed to jump to safety but Mr Doyle was unable to do so. He fell into the shaft beneath with parts of the platform and equipment that had been stored on top raining down on him.
Mr Doyle required extensive treatment and physiotherapy, and has been left with limited movement in his right arm because of the elbow injury. He is no longer able to work in construction.
The HSE investigation identified that SGSL, as the principal contractor, had failed to properly plan and manage the construction work so as to avoid risks to safety. The company failed to ensure that their subcontractors had developed and implemented safe systems of work, particularly in relation to the management and use of temporary works.
After sentencing HSE inspector Loraine Charles said: “It is vitally important that principal contractors appreciate that managing and monitoring subcontractors involves more than merely requiring them to provide risk assessments and method statements, and then carrying out basic hazard spotting inspections. They need to make sure that there is a proper assessment of the content of the documentation provided to ensure that they make sense and properly address the risks associated with the work being undertaken.
“In this case, St George South London concerned themselves more with the existence than the content of the subcontractor safety documents, and although they themselves carried out regular site safety inspections, all of these were superficial and failed to indentify significant systemic failures.”
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