21st September 2011 - INCORRECT USE OF TELEHANDLER RESULTS IN INJURY
An engineering company has been fined after a worker was severely injured when he fell whilst dismantling a redundant aerial mast. The worker was working as part of a team removing the mast at a former RAF remote radar head when the incident happened last summer.
HSE Article 21st September 2011
A worker and his colleagues were working from inside the mast and were unbolting pieces of metal and wood and loading them into a telehandler with a bucket attachment, so that they could be safely lowered to the ground.
When they encountered some difficulty unbolting a piece of metal they could not fully reach from inside the mast, the men agreed to stand in the bucket attachment so that they could be lifted up and unbolt the metal from the outside.
They then balanced the piece of metal, which was about four metres long, on the bucket as it was lowered to the ground. But when they were still eight or nine feet off the ground the metal slipped, and a smaller piece of metal caught the back of the soon to be injured employees boiler suit, catapulting him out of the bucket to the ground below.
The injured employee fractured a vertebrae in his back, broke his left arm in two places, broke his thumbs and received multiple abrasions to his face and neck.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the incident found that although Ness Engineering Ltd had carried out a risk assessment for the dismantling operation, it was not part of the planned system of work to use the bucket attachment on the telehandler, nor to access the mast from the outside.
HSE Inspector Alan MacKinnon said:
"The bucket attachment on the telehandler was not suitable for transporting people and as soon as Ness Engineering allowed their employees to be lifted up in it, the risk assessment they had carried out became meaningless."
Please follow the link below for the full article:-
http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2011/coi-sco-08511.htm
KNW Training provide training for Telehandlers for further information please call 01677 424 633
