Worker caught his hand in truck mast..

...as he balanced on forks

A maintenance engineer’s hand became trapped in the moving parts of a forklift-truck mast as he balanced on a pallet on its forks while being lowered from a height of three metres.

Telford and Bridgnorth Magistrates’ Court heard on 8 September that three maintenance engineers employed by Invotec Circuits of Blackburn, Lancashire, had been replacing the motor of a local exhaust ventilation (LEV) system at the company’s factory in Telford on 7 February 2008. The LEV system was situated at a height of three metres in the external wall of the factory, where high-tech circuit boards were manufactured.

HSE investigating and prosecuting inspector Guy Dale told SHP that no risk assessment had been conducted when the engineers decided to replace the motor using a forklift truck with a pallet balanced on the forks as a work platform – a practice that was “asking for trouble”.

The court was told that ladders were used to undo the bolts on the motor, and the truck then driven into place by the engineering manager. No edge protection or other protective measures had been provided on the pallet on the forklift when the manager and one of the engineers climbed on to it to extract the old motor down on to the pallet.

The manager then got down to drive the truck, leaving one of the men standing on the pallet as the truck was being lowered and reversed. “It was a very unstable situation to be in,” the inspector said. When the man put out his left hand to steady himself, it went into the mast apparatus of the truck and became trapped by the moving mechanism, partially de-gloving his middle finger.

“There was no guarding to stop this, as the man shouldn’t have been standing there in the first place,” inspector Dale asserted. “The use of equipment was inappropriate, the wrong equipment was used, and the exercise was badly supervised.”

Mitigating, the owner of the business thanked the HSE for its assistance and advice and apologised for the incident. He said the firm had taken steps to avoid a recurrence of such an incident.

Inspector Dale emphasised: “Serious injuries or a fatality are the usual consequences of such a fall. In this instance, the injured party thankfully did not fall, but incurred the injury in preventing a fall.”

He stressed that incidents like these could be avoided if companies ensured that they had assessed the risks from working at height, thought through a safe way of tackling a job, provided all the necessary equipment, and ensured workers were fully trained and properly supervised.

Invotec pleaded guilty to breaching reg.4(1) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005, by failing to properly plan and supervise work at height. The company was fined £1000 and ordered to pay full costs of £1259.