Construction Company Held Liable for Failure of Site Manager to Ensure Safety
Murray Provan, from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), has cautioned construction companies to ensure the proper safety of their workers so that workers do not fall victim to fatal accidents, especially those occurring because of work at heights, which can be avoided with a little care.
This comment followed the plea of ‘guilty’ of a construction company, Discovery Homes (Scotland) Limited, and one of its directors before the Dundee Sheriff Court. Both pleaded guilty of violating different sections of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The company was ordered to pay a fine of £5,000 and the Director a fine of £4,000 for their collective failure to ensure proper workplace safety. Their slackness caused the death of one of the company’s workers, Andrezej Freitag, who fell from a height of approximately three metres while working, and later succumbed to his injuries.
The Health and Safety Executive said that the fault lay in the hands of the Director, Mr. Richard Pratt, who was also the site manager. He had the responsibility of ensuring safety but failed to do the same. It would be safe to say that the accident would not have taken place but for his lack of care. The Working at Height course is aimed at enabling those responsible for such work, such as health and safety managers, facilities managers and safety supervisors, to undertake a suitable and sufficient risk assessment – click on Working at Height courses for more info on the training offered by experts at Workplace Law.
The company used a barricade, which is normally used for road work, and not the one which is actually used for protection from falls from heights. Since there was nothing to prevent the fall, the victim died in the accident. The Health and Safety Executive also said that the liability of the company arose from the liability of its director-site manager.
