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Two building companies were fined a total of £320 000 after 12
storeys of scaffolding partially collapsed onto a road and railway
in Cardiff. Miraculously, nobody was hurt as the incident occurred
late at night. The collapse, which happened in December 2000, caused
major disruption as the road and railway were closed for five days.
An HSE investigation identified a catalogue of errors, which
contributed to the collapse:
■ The scaffold design was defective in certain
areas. In particular, the design drawing for the scaffolders did not
provide adequate information on the number, location and make-up of
the ties.
■ A decision was taken at site level by the
contracts manager and scaffolder to change the design, without
checking with the designer. This was because the design drawing
supplied was poorly prepared and ambiguous.
■ Ninety-one anchor ties were installed, rather
than the required 300.There were no drilled fixings in the topmost 6
m of the scaffolding.
■ Each tie consisted of two ringbolts with
drilled anchors. The ties were defectively installed, as the
scaffolders were not trained in the proper fixing of the anchors and
associated ringbolts. As a result the ties failed prematurely in
high winds.
■ The principal contractor did not carry out
checks on either the design of the scaffolding or the adequacy of
the installation. A scaffolding register was not completed, nor was
there a system for carrying out weekly inspections of the
scaffolding. The number of ties installed was not checked at
hand-over, nor had any been tested. Andrew Knowles, the HSE
inspector who led the investigation, said: ‘This is the worst
scaffold collapse I have investigated. It is only a matter of good
fortune that nobody was injured. Had the incident happened during
the daytime, the consequences could have been catastrophic. ’Since
the incident the principal contractor has trained over 40 engineers
in scaffold inspection and the scaffolding contractor has carried
out a company-wide retraining programme. (http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/pdf/may2003.pdf
)
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