Donald Craig, the Director of Craig Services & Access has been sentenced to the maximum available penalty of two years imprisonment for breaching health and safety law after the collapse of an unsafe cherry picker killed one employee and caused serious injuries to another.
The company employees, Gary Currie and Alexander Nisbet were working using a mobile elevated work platform (MEWP), elevated to a height of around 30 metres. The machine buckled and collapsed while the men were removing netting from a building's facade. Nisbet was operating the machine, while Currie worked in the basket. Failure of the third main boom section of the MEWP caused the basket to crash to the ground, killing Currie and seriously injuring Nisbet. The collapse happened on 20 July 2012 at an office block in Glasgow.
The Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) investigation found that there had been an earlier similar incident in Penicuik, on 17 May 2011, when a cherry picker's boom buckled whilst in use. Fortunately, on this occasion, the fall was stopped by the roof of the block of flats and no one was injured. The court heard, that there was no thorough investigation of the failure of the boom following the incident in 2011 and instead of advised replacement of the damaged boom, the company chose to repair it, without the manufacturer's approval or specification.
This type of damage required a major repair and extensive modification to ensure the safety of the platform, however the manager instructed the welding company to carry out the repairs and assured the welder that the platform would be used only for short-reach works and would not be load-bearing. Craig Services did not ensure that there were modifications to prevent the third boom section of the cherry picker from bearing loads.
For exposing the employees to the risk of injury or death and failure to maintain the equipment in a safe condition, the company was fined £61,000. Another company, J M Access Solutions, which had been hired to carry out statutory inspections and had failed to do so were fined £31,000.
HSE principal inspector, Graeme McMinn said: "At the time of the accident, the MEWP had a catalogue of defects some of which were safety critical demonstrating that Craig Services did not have an adequate proactive maintenance and reactive repair system in place within the company." and added " The competence and diligence of a thorough examiner is vital as it is they who declare the MEWP safe to use. JM Access Solutions failed to carry out a diligent thorough examination and declared MEWP safe to use."
