HSE Construction Safety Alerts
Latest Safety Alerts
- 02 September 2010
- Safety notice – Risks to pedestrians from crushing zones on electrically powered gates
- Actions required to prevent the trapping and crushing of persons by electrically powered gates. The purpose of this Safety Notice is to reinforce and update previous information to organisations and individuals involved in the design, construction, installation and commissioning of electrically powered gates and organisations in control of their use and/or maintenance. It is also relevant [...]
- 16 July 2010
- Safety notice – Avoiding trapping/crushing injuries to people in the platform of mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs)
- More people die from falls at work than from any other cause. The use of mobile elevating work platforms/powered access equipment has been a major factor in the reduction in falls accidents. For temporary work at height this kind of equipment is often the safest solution. However there are currently under investigation a number of fatal and [...]
- 15 July 2010
- Safety notice – Risks associated with working on or near lamp columns with non-standard roots during excavation works
- In February 2010 a young child was killed and a woman injured when a lamp column fell on them. The lamp column fell outside the boundary of a site where street works were taking place. The lamp column was of a non-standard root design being a cranked root where the foundation is offset from the lamp [...]
- 07 July 2010
- Safety Alert – Fatality caused by stacked boards collapse
- In a recent incident a worker was killed whilst he was helping to remove a board from a stack leaning against a wall. He lost control of the weight of the boards and they fell on him causing serious head injuries. In an earlier almost identical incident at another site a worker had his legs [...]
- 25 March 2010
- Safety Alert – Use of chain flail/non standard accessories on brush cutters
- Portable, hand-held, combustion engine driven brush cutters are commonly used for cutting weeds, brush and similar vegetation, and are frequently utilised in ground-clearance operations connected with construction work, using a variety of standard cutting attachments. HSE has become aware of a dangerous practice involving the fitting of non-standard accessories, not approved by the manufacturers, to brush cutting [...]
- 23 March 2010
- Death prompts telehandler warning
- Workers are being warned not to operate telehandlers if the right-hand side window is missing or broken, following a fatal incident. A 36-year-old man was apparently leaning through the broken window aperture when he was crushed by the descending boom. It is the third such fatal accident in the last seven years. View press release ‘Death prompts [...]
