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Yorkshire Water Services fined £733k for fitter’s fatal burns

Open-access content Friday 21st September 2018
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Yorkshire Water Services fined £733k for fitter's fatal burns

Michael Jennings sustained whole-body burns when the angle grinder he was using to cut corroded bolts on a stop valve at the foot of a dry well, created sparks which showered on to his overalls causing them to burst into flames. Jennings managed to climb out but died in hospital from his injuries two days later. A colleague, who helped him escape, sustained minor burns to his hands.

The two fitters had been called to Tadcaster Sewage Treatment Works on 20 July 2015 to replace a corroded stop valve on the end of a drain pipe, which emerged from the end of the disused three-chamber (digester) lane 1 into a 3 m deep dry well.

The regional water authority had built the trade waste plant in the 1980s with two adjoining, three-chamber lanes for treating effluent from the town's three famous breweries: The Tower Brewery, John Smith's and Samuel Smith's Old Brewery. In 2008, two breweries stopped sending liquid waste and lane 1 was taken out of service.

Before this happened, Yorkshire Water Services upgraded the treatment process and introduced an oxygen injection system using submerged pumps. However, when pumps in the active lane deteriorated, the water authority decided to recover some from the disused lane as spares.

HSE inspector John Micklethwaite told IOSH Magazine that when workers were preparing to retrieve the pumps in September 2014, one of the fitter's gas detection monitors was triggered showing high oxygen levels in the disused lane 1. The project leader alerted local managers and the incident was logged as a near-miss on the company's networked safety system, Safeguard.

Micklethwaite added that the fitter's manager later reviewed the near-miss incident and concluded that the oxygen had been left over from its previous use, pre-2008, that the oxygen had all been removed and therefore did not pose a risk. Consequently, Yorkshire Water Services took no further action.

Fitters had also identified a problem with the six-inch valve bolted on to the end of the drain pipe, which emerged into the bottom of the dry well and appeared to have seized. In June 2015, fitters managed to force the valve open but were unable to close it entirely, so set up a job to replace it on 20 July.

Micklethwaite said the water authority had extensive procedures, including ones for confined space work. These included a point-of-work risk assessment, method statements, and a permit to work system. However, a catalogue of failures led to the fatality.

The two fitters and the senior operator, who had only been in post for five-six weeks, were unfamiliar with the plant, which was the water authority's only treatment works using oxygen enrichment. The fitters failed to identify the hazard on the method statement, and it was not specified in the permit to work issued by the senior operator.

Micklethwaite said: "Another factor was that, although the fitters knew the bolts would be corroded, they didn't flag up the possibility that they might need to use power tools and an angle grinder."

After attempting to dislodge the valve bolts with spanners, a monkey wrench and a hammer and chisel, Jennings asked his colleague to pass down his battery-powered angle grinder.

"At this point, the two fitters were proposing to carry out hot work, so they should have stopped the job and gone back to the permit issuer," Micklethwaite said. "The permit then should have been amended or reissued but that didn't happen."

While he was working the valve, Jennings managed to open it about half way. The investigation concluded that from this point onwards the bottom of the well began to fill with oxygen enriched air from the adjoining lane 1, but this was not detected initially.

"A gas monitor was suspended in the dry well but only at head height," said the inspector. "As Jennings was using the angle grinder, sparks impinged on his clothing, which went up like a torch."

When the gas monitor's data was downloaded, the HSE found that one gas alarm which had exceeded the safe level had been activated, but Jennings had failed to leave the well.

When the HSE brought its prosecution, it argued that the near-miss review was a significant factor in the company's overall failing. However, at the trial at Leeds Crown Court, where Yorkshire Water Services pleaded guilty to breaching s 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act, Judge Penelope Belcher said that the conclusions drawn by the manager in reviewing the near-miss were incorrect but that the water authority had not been negligent. She didn't consider it to be a major factor in assessing culpability.

As a result, Judge Belcher determined that the regional water authority's culpability was medium. She agreed with Yorkshire Water Services, which has a turnover of about £1bn, that a series of unforeseeable events took place leading up to the fatality and decided on harm category 2. In setting a fine, she started at £1.2m but deducted £100,000 to account for the company's excellent safety record and remedial measures. She reduced it further by a third to account for its guilty plea and ordered it to pay also £18,818 costs.

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 Costain and Galliford Try hit for £2.8m after worker loses toes in sewage plant incident

Friday 21st September 2018
Costain and Galliford Try Building were part of a consortium appointed by United Utilities to upgrade the Tarporley wastewater treatment works in Cheshire. On 5 March 2015 MEICA (mechanical, electrical, instrumentation control and automation) site manager Peter Rowan and a software engineer were commissioning a storm screen – a machine comprising a 3.1 m-long screw conveyor mounted horizontally inside an overflow chamber with a mesh basket attached to the underside – to remove solid objects from liquid sewage.
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 Dessert maker fined £50k for MD's mother's fragile ceiling fall injuries

Tuesday 25th September 2018
Basildon Magistrates’ Court heard on 21 September how the MD's mother, an Indulgence Patisserie employee, was asked to sort shoes, which were stored on a floor next to an unprotected area of fragile ceiling tiles when the incident happened on 8 January 2016.While carrying out the non-routine task, the employee fell around 2.7 m. The injuries she sustained resulted in a five-day hospital stay.
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Friday 28th September 2018
A waste operative for B&W Waste Management Services sustained third-degree burns when he was engulfed in a fireball created when a spark from a forklift truck ignited a cloud of gas from the canisters. He was put in a medically-induced coma for ten days on a life-support machine, has undergone several operations, and relies on medication for nerve pain. The forklift driver was also burned.
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 Structural steelwork co in the frame for £150k fine over roofer’s spinal injury

Thursday 13th September 2018
An employee of Northern Structures was removing roof sheets from a timber-framed farm building on 20 September 2017 when he fell through one of the asbestos cement roof sheets, landing 4 m below. A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that, although Northern Structures had provided a risk assessment and method statement to remove the roof sheets from below the frame, the method was then changed so the worker had to stand on the roof and remove the sheets.
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 Irish regulators launch farm inspection campaign to minimise work at height risks

Monday 1st October 2018
The Health and Safety Authority in the Republic of Ireland and the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) are launching the campaign today, which will include a special focus on the risks of work on fragile roofs.Many agriculture buildings use fragile roofing materials that cannot support a person’s weight. The Irish regulators have found that serious and fatal falls often occur when farmers are repairing storm-damaged buildings.
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 Building firm’s MD banned over unsafe London site

Tuesday 2nd October 2018
Kewie Doherty’s company, C J Langs, was also sentenced after inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found unsafe work-at-height practices, a lack of suitable equipment, and untrained operatives working without supervision. They had visited the site in Sherborne Gardens, Ealing, following an accident in January 2017, Westminster Magistrates’ Court was told.
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